Resonant Dark
by sarunotoki
Summary: COMPLETE. Want 'verse. Sequel to Sick Moon: Al is restored and Ed struggles to come to terms with life, himself, and Roy. M for sexual situations. :RoyxEd:
1. part one

Ed woke to screaming and

"Al –"

jerked, tripped, fell out of bed before he even remembered to open his eyes, but it didn't matter,

"Al –"

he knew the way better disoriented in the middle of the night than he did during the day (two thrashing hops still tangled in his blankets and three half-sideways stumbles over the cold floor) and

"Al –"

his hands found Al as easy as touching his own nose in the dark and he didn't even notice the pain of his knees hitting the bedframe or the creak of the mattress dipping under his weight as his body scrambled to catch up with his hands –

"Al. Al, wake up, it's alright, you're alright, Al, wake up –"

He got his hands to either side of his little brother's face and the scream ripped up through his palms, tore its way into his chest and he'd give anything, _anything_ to be able to bear this for Al, for Al not to have to feel this –

"You're right here, Al, you're in your body and I'm touching you, you can feel me, I'm here, you're here, wake _up_ –"

A sharp breath like inhaling a knife and then Al was jerking upright, slamming into Ed's arms and Ed's chest with enough force to bruise and scrabbling desperately at Ed's back before he remembered how to make his human hands work.

And the first sob choked out like all his organs bursting inside him.

Al's fingers dug into his skin and Al's tears seared over his collarbone, down his chest, and Ed could only hold him, close and tight but not safe, never safe from this. Al didn't say anything, but Ed knew he wouldn't, knew there was nothing to say against the memory of someone bleeding out inside you, of dreaming a cat moving around in what should had been your stomach, but wasn't.

---

They went by Mustang's new office on their way to the train station (_"I don't care how fragile you are, if you tell him this was my idea I'm going to – Al! Get back here, don't you _dare_, Al–!"_), because they both felt guilty (_"I do _not_."_) about not saying goodbye the last time.

Not that it would have been goodbye, anyway; Ed had almost definitely known that it was going to work – and it wasn't like it was even their fault, Mustang had no right to be giving them that _look_. Al had been forgetting things for months, fuck, _years_, but Ed hadn't known until Al had looked at him scarfing down his breakfast one morning and asked in a curious voice, "Why do you do that?" like he'd been too hesitant to ask before but finally just couldn't help himself. And once Ed had looked, once he'd _paid fucking attention_, he'd noticed that Al was moving slower, stiffer and stilted, like – like he was a suit of armour that had never been meant to move by itself at all.

He would have clapped right then, used the array that had been hovering in the back of his mind since the Gate had had him the first time, but Al had grabbed his hands and begged, screamed at him in a high, frantic voice that came from nowhere, "No! Brother, stop, you can't – please, no, _stop_!"

So. A month, they'd decided – the best compromise they could come up with between _I don't care, it can take what it wants, I'm not letting this happen_ and _I don't want my body if you're going to die for it, you can't make me take it_. They'd given up on the stone years ago, given up on any number of theories since, given up and given up and given up until they'd had to fall right back to basics almost a year ago in a hope to – have hope.

The work they'd started into self-perpetuating arrays – complicated, multi-layered concentric or spiralling circles that could feed the energy back into itself – was imperfect, too simple or too complicated or too limited or not limited enough (Ed didn't know what Mustang had been so damn pissy about; he'd rebuilt the building after he'd gotten out of the hospital), but it was the best they had. And Al was forgetting himself.

It was just luck, really, that Mustang had had to go politic-ing across the country three weeks later; Ed had spent every minute of those twenty-one days expecting the man to figure out what he was planning and call him into his office, give him that terrifyingly direct (honest) look and say, "You'll find another way." like he actually really believed that Ed could. And while Mustang was _there_ and not _here_, Ed hadn't had to worry about having to look him in the eye and tell him that he actually really couldn't, that this was truly all that he was and the best he could do. Because he really wasn't sure that he could have, actually.

They'd found an abandoned place surrounded by nothing for miles, because they still hadn't quite figured out how to stop the build of energy without just interrupting the reaction. If Ed waited half a second too long there would be too much to channel into the second array, more complex than the first but held as sacred as Al's blood seal in the meet of his palms, and if he waited half a second not long enough, there simply wouldn't be the energy to complete the transmutation.

Except not completing the transmutation hadn't ever really been an option. So Ed had made a flippant comment to Fuery before they'd left about _What if_, because Ed was still about as subtle as a gas explosion and Fuery took everything at face value, at least until he'd had most of a morning to run it through his head.

And Al would have needed somebody if Ed had had to use the _other_ array, the one that had been sitting behind his eyes like an axe waiting to fall since he was eleven.

He'd been almost definitely sure that he was going to have to, too, right from the moment he'd agreed not to (sitting sprawled against his brother's metal body being warmed by the sunlight his brother couldn't feel and eating a sandwich his brother had gone without for eight years, now). The last thing he'd expected was for their cobbled-together theory to _work_, to wake up a handful of days later in the hospital with Al – skin, nerves, pulse, _Al_ – in the next bed, breathing like he'd never forgotten how. To wake up and have to face the gut-wrenching embarrassment of being found not just unconscious but _naked_, exposed and vulnerable like something the Gate had stripped, used, broken, and thrown out again.

But they were flesh, and alive, and _flesh_, and no one but Ed ever had to know that he'd spent a month thinking knowing he was going to die, thinking –

Nothing. It didn't matter.

He still couldn't quite believe it, anyway, even as they entered the office and were greeted by Havoc, sitting on the vacated secretary's desk like it was perfectly natural for him to be there. Even as Fuery perked up from his already attentive position standing to the side and Breda _grinned_ from his casual slouch in the secretary's chair and Hawkeye offered them a completely unrestrained smile where she stood beside the inner door. They were alive. _Al_ was alive, was _flesh_ and _blood_ and _bone_, and they'd gotten everything that they'd wanted.

– It was just that Ed hadn't really considered what would happen _after_ they'd gotten everything they'd wanted. He'd woken up with a new arm and a new leg and every half-shift of air like agony and ecstasy on his skin; the nurse had touched his wrist and he'd screamed – fucking _screamed_ – and thrown himself away so violently that he'd ripped his IV out of his other arm and his shoulderblades had bruised for days afterward.

Not Al, though. Al had had no feeling in his entire body, hadn't had a body not to feel with, and the first thing he'd done on waking was grab Ed's nervously hovering hand and yank him down onto his own white mattress and curl into Ed's body, bury his face in Ed's shoulder like they'd never lost anything at all.

And that was it. Al wanted to touch _everything_; he trailed his fingers over the bed, the wall, the door, the steadily turning wheel of his wheelchair. He never once flinched away from the nurses, or from Gracia, or from the touch of the sun on his skin. Al wanted to _hug_ everyone goodbye; he threw his arms around Fuery (who turned bright red and flailed and stuttered a farewell back), and Havoc (who nearly choked on his unlit cigarette, but recovered enough to give him a slap on the back in return), and Breda (who caught on and tried to avoid his turn with a weak wave and a scratch of his head before resigning himself to Al's persistence with awkward grace), and Falman (who hugged Al back like it was the most natural thing in the world and said, "It's been an honour to know you, Alphonse," while everyone else just stared at him), and – still unhesitatingly – Hawkeye (who lingered with the warmest expression Ed had ever seen on her face and patted Al's shoulder firmly as she pulled away, as if that could disguise the brightness of her eyes), and _Mustang_ (who smiled in that strange way Ed remembered from the hospital and murmured something that Ed couldn't hear), and he laughed the whole time like it was the best thing in the world. Then he crouched down to scratch Hayate in his turn, and the office turned to Ed. And _looked_ at him.

Ed looked right back, and then _glared_, because Mustang was looking amused and Hawkeye was trying not to sigh and the others were shifting around like they couldn't decide whether to run or not, and Al was smiling, smiling, smiling because he could feel Hayate's coarse fur scritching under his fingers.

"Well," Mustang said, extending a hand before Ed could spit out something stupid just to break silence. And Ed wasn't grateful, wasn't – so what if the man had stuck out his left hand as well? – because there was a light in Mustang's eyes that made Ed's insides lurch and stumble into a confused _hwa-?_ instead. "It's been a pleasure, Fullmetal. Try not to destroy too much of the country without us to keep an eye on you, hm?"

Bastard.

"Try not to pull a muscle doing your own dirty work, bastard." Ed parroted back as Al stood in his peripheral vision and sighed, real breath into real lungs, and the happiness just burst in Ed's chest, forced its way onto his face as the warmth spread all the way through him. So he found himself grinning at Mustang, adding, "And that's Ed to you," and tapping the man's naked palm with his own naked fingers.

He gave a flick of a wave over his shoulder as he turned to the door, and he was still smiling when they left.

---

"Good morning." Al greeted cheerfully as Winry came down the stairs, her eyes still half closed, hair everywhere and overlarge shirt hanging precariously off one shoulder.

"Ung." She grunted, fumbling a chair out from the table and all but falling into it. Al wasn't phased at all (he'd grown up with _Ed_) and kept on smiling as he placed a freshly poured cup of coffee in front of her. She made another indecipherable noise and downed the first half in two fat swallows.

Ed had to stop himself from falling to the floor and professing his eternal gratitude; firstly, because she would never let him hear the end of it if he did, and secondly, because he was just too stuffed to move. Al, unsurprisingly, hadn't wanted to go back to sleep after he'd ripped himself awake, and Ed had been too wired on unused adrenaline to try, so they'd come downstairs and had coffee sitting in exhaustion-sharp silence at the kitchen table. Until Al had jumped up from his empty second cup like he'd been scalded, and started making pancakes.

That had been a good _two hours_ ago, and Ed felt like another bite would break the delicate balance between his stomach being grossly distended and actually exploding. Just the sight of the plate Al put in front of Winry made his insides roll dangerously.

"Would you like some more, brother?" Al asked innocently, and Ed hoped the pain didn't show on his face.

"Ah, no, I'm good." He managed. "Thanks, Al."

"You're welcome." Al chirped – _chirped_ – and took Ed's plate with the bright flash of a smile, putting it with the rest of the dishes waiting beside the sink.

Ed sagged in his seat – god, he was going to have to lie down for a week, a _month_, he couldn't imaging moving ever again – and caught Winry's eyes on him, clear and intense and no longer tired at all. He shrugged in reply, meeting her glare with the best non-expression he could muster. If Al wanted her to know, Al would tell her. Shit, he didn't even talk to Ed, except when he was so hysterical that the words scrabbled up and out of him like puking cockroaches. Instead, he just... smiled, and made pancakes, and left them to glare and not-glare at each other while he washed the dishes and pretended he couldn't feel the tension heavy against his back.

Winry finally tore her gaze away and attacked her stack of pancakes like they had done her a very personal, very unforgivable wrong. Ed slumped down a little further. He just – what the hell was he meant to _do_? It wasn't supposed to be this – this _silence_, this space between them like they were strangers and didn't dare say any of the words they all knew were there. They'd reached their goal, shouldn't this part be easier...?

"Do we need anything in town?" He asked, loud and abrupt and ugly. The question was usually met with Winry's half-joking completely-serious warning, punctuated with a screwdriver to the head, to actually _get_ what they needed in town, instead of just-so-happening to into the bookstore and coming back sans groceries with his nose stuck in a hundred year old copy of _The Soul of Alchemy_.

He'd never wished to be assaulted with heavy metal tools before, but he would have preferred it to this.

"Eggs." Al piped up abruptly like he hadn't noticed the pause at all. "And milk."

---

The last thing Ed expected was to walk back into the kitchen an hour later and see – Al and Winry. In front of the stove. Kissing.

He didn't think he'd made a sound but they jumped apart suddenly, jerking around to stare at him like he was the most horrifying thing they'd ever seen – and then Al's face was burning and he was looking embarrassed-but-pleased, and Winry was bright red and... guilty?

"Ed!" She squeaked – _squeaked_, like she wasn't the same girl who threw metal tools around like they were made of paper and performed horrific surgeries without so much as a blink – and her eyes were trying to meet his but kept sliding away before they quite could. "You – this isn't –" She fidgeted with the hem of her too-large shirt, shifted from one foot to the other and looked at everything, anything, as long as it wasn't Ed.

Ed... stared, mouth hanging partially open where some forgotten breath had abandoned him, and tried to think beyond Al and Winry and the image of them attached at the mouth in front of the stove (Al with one hand on her waist – not a kid's hand any longer, but a man's hand, large enough to curve around her from belly to back – and the other cupped around the back of her head, lost in the chaotic morning-tangle of wheat-gold, and Winry with her arms flung around Al's neck, dragging him down to meet her as her body bowed up into his –)

"I thought it was." Al said, his voice quiet and too steady.

Winry startled like she'd forgotten he was there, and the flush drained right out of her face.

"Al–"

"_No_." He interrupted, so vehemently that they all jumped. He took a deep breath, let it out, and when he continued, his teeth were gritted and his eyes were too bright and his voice cracked with trying not to break. "I thought it _was_ and you just – I'm not a _consolation prize_, I'm not some – _substitute_ that you can use just because we're similar enough that you can _make do_."

Winry looked like she'd been slapped and Ed felt like he'd been stabbed right through with an uneven tree branch. Because as Al turned away – as Al _turned away_, like he hadn't even when Ed had lost him his whole damn body – his eyes flicked to Ed's, and Ed saw – hurt, anger, betrayal. Resignation.

"Al –"

Her voice stopped him with his first foot on the stairs but he didn't look around, clutched the banister with white knuckles like he might collapse if he didn't.

"You don't get to play pretend with me just because I love you." He said, sounding so tired and _defeated_ and Ed didn't know what to do, didn't know what to say that might make this better –

But Al had disappeared up the stairs already, his footsteps near-silent (because stomping was what Ed did), and the door closing with barely a click, (because Ed would have slammed it hard enough to make the house shake) – and that was just two of the tiny ways in which Al was better than him, had always been better than him, and, god, it was so _obvious_, why would Winry...?

... turn to look at him, with her eyes slightly red and her mouth held in a trembling-tight line and her eyes sick and miserable and oh god _hopeful_ –

Ed opened his mouth, closed it, opened it – and no words came out, no sound at all. Winry stared back at him, eyes boring into his like they'd never had any trouble meeting them, and some new expression crept up under her skin, settled like a nervous shiver on her face – and crumpled, into a look he hadn't seen since she was newly orphaned and they were both too young to fix anything.

She pushed past him on the way out, hard enough to make him stumble back a step but not hard enough to send him into the wall like she usually would. The door slammed behind her (hard enough to make the house shake and send a jagged crack up the doorframe), and Ed just stood, staring blindly at the stove in the sudden yawning silence of the kitchen and wondering what the hell had just happened.

After a moment (two? Two thousand?) Ed stirred, moved toward the stairs – only to stop when something crunched sharply beneath his bare foot. He blinked out of his daze and looked down – at the shattered mess of what had been a carton of eggs and a bottle of milk.

---

"Ed," was the first thing out of Mustang's mouth when they saw each other again, while Ed was still not-quite-open-mouthed staring and holding a bread roll halfway to his mouth.

"Uh." He said intelligently, and then, "Ah," lowering his breakfast and feeling ridiculously embarrassed. "Mustang. Hey."

An almost imperceptible pause, long enough for Ed to wonder if he had something on his face (or, when Mustang's eyes flicked down, his fly undone), and then the man replied, "Hey yourself." with one eyebrow quirked upward in a familiar way and a tone that gave no hint of the mockery that Ed _knew_ should be there. "When did you get back to Central?"

Um.

"A. Couple of months."

"Really?" He tipped his head in the direction Ed had been going and – they fell into step together, like they always found each other outside the market after two years of no contact at all. "And Alphonse as well?"

"Uh, yeah." Ed struggled to think, to come up with something other than the dazed _what the hell?_ that was ricocheting back and forth inside his head and scrambling his brains a little more with every pass.

It didn't help that Mustang – the bastard – seemed to accept Ed's presence with barely a pause. What the hell was wrong with the man? When Ed expected him to shrug and say _it's only Fullmetal_, he showed up and _yelled_ at Ed for not asking him (not anyone, _him_ specifically) for help. Yet when Ed expected to get that furious look (not _hurt_, that was stupid, Mustang would never be _hurt_ because of him), when Ed had been arguing with that look in the back of his mind for more than half a year and knew every reason why his actions didn't need defending – the man just asked _Really?_ in a genuinely inquiring tone, and Ed didn't know any more what the hell he was supposed to think.

"We got this dump of a place, fixed it up." He blurted, desperate to shut himself up before he said something else. He wasn't in the military any more, he didn't have any reason to feel _bad_ just because he didn't announce himself all over Central, he didn't owe the bastard anything – "Al an' Winry've been doing this stuff with automail for a while, trying to make it better – less invasive, more sensitive, shit like that. It was taking ten times longer to get anything real done, though, 'cause of the distance, so they figured it'd be worth a bash to set up here. Turns out a couple of places had to close without a war to keep 'em in patients, and Winry apparently wasn't exaggerating 'bout Rockbell Automail being famous, so."

So, Ed was babbling like an idiot. So.

"And you?" Mustang asked with a glance, calm and composed and curious like Ed wasn't falling all over himself inside. "You don't sound like you're doing the 'automail thing'."

"Me?" The startled question fell out of his mouth before he could stop it, and he snapped his mouth shut, fixed his gaze on the footpath passing under his feet. He used to scream at this man over his desk at least once a week, just talking shouldn't be so _hard_.

He shrugged, after a moment, but he kept his eyes on the grey illusion of movement as he spoke. "I don't have the patience for it – didn't even know how the stuff worked when I had it. Al's got me looking into alternative materials, trying to make something that can at least fake bein' organic, 'cause what moron thought metal was a good thing to attach to your body in the first place, right? And our neighbour seems to think I'm her personal fixit boy or something, but other than that I mostly just stay outta the way – do the shopping." He hefted the bags slightly (paper, but he'd alchemised handles into them so he could hold them in one hand and eat with the other, not that that was going very well) and tilted his head to flash a grin – and nearly tripped on his own feet when an answering expression flicked up the corners of Mustang's mouth. "What about you, anyway?" Shit, did that sound as abruptly too-quick as he thought it did? He took a breath, forced the next words to come out with something like calm. "You're not in the line up to rule the world."

That eyebrow again, but this time Ed recognised the rest of the expression, too, and instead of the relief he'd expected, he wanted to _punch_ the man. Not because of the old, childish frustration, not because that look still had the power to make him feel barely an inch high, but because how _dare_ he –

"Ah, well." Mustang said, still in that surreal facile tone, and Ed realised he'd been glaring, jerked his eyes away to make himself stop. "No, I'm not."

And that seemed to be all, and Ed couldn't quite decide whether to be annoyed for the typical evasion or relieved that the only thing that had changed was him – but then Mustang turned his head so they were half meeting each other's eyes and gave him a long, considering look that slid all the way down Ed's spine, and Ed knew he should have been relieved.

Mustang turned away again and said, "I've found that there are certain advantages in not running the entire country." as if he hadn't just – _looked_ at him. "As Defence Minister, I have nearly exclusive control of the military and a considerable vote in foreign affairs. I also have a great deal of influence in the alchemy sector, because I'm the highest ranked alchemist. If I were Prime Minister, I'd have to defer to my Ministers and submit to a vote every time I wanted to–" small, conspiratorial smile just out of the corner of his eye that made Ed's stomach tighten "–skip out early for lunch. The chance that I'd be assassinated would increase rather dramatically, and I would have to sign my name at least ten times more often than I do now, which is already ten times too many, in my opinion."

"... Should'a known you'd do anything to avoid doing actual work."

"Well." Mustang said again, looking at Ed sidelong with bright, unreadable eyes. "It is my life at risk."

The laugh jumped out of him without any warning at all, and it would have startled him into something embarrassing, except in that moment it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

It wasn't until the next moment that Ed realised he'd just laughed with _Mustang_, and the _what the hell?_ pinged off the front of his skull.


	2. part two

"Al?" Ed closed the door behind himself, crept into the dark room and felt like he was trespassing. He could just make out the shape of Al in the bed, a lump of black against the evening half-dark, and he remembered a time when Al couldn't fit under a blanket properly even if he'd needed one, wished he could just stop ruining things for him. "Al?"

Another step brought him up beside the bed, the lump, and a hand darted out (skin blanched dull in the dim light, and Ed didn't think that would ever stop being the most amazing thing he'd ever seen), caught his wrist and pulled him down with an uncompromising yank onto the mattress and under the covers and into Al's arms like they were newly alive again.

"Al–"

"I'm not mad at you, brother." Al said, pressing his face into Ed's shoulder and twining his limbs with Ed's and around Ed's until they were as close as they could be when Al didn't have a hollow metal body for Ed to crawl into any more. "I'm not mad at – her, either, I guess, I just... it's fine. It's fine. I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy."

For a long, terrifying moment, Ed had no idea what to say that didn't start with _I don't_ –

"I thought I was supposed to be the stupid one." He said over his own thoughts, shifting so that Al's hipbone wasn't grinding quite so hard into his. "Winry's like a sister. That's it. I don't – think of her like," oh god he was blushing, "that."

Silence, a moment.

"But she loves you." Al mumbled into his skin, pressing closer like he was trying to suffocate himself away from the hitch in his breath. "How can you not –?" – and then he reared back, eyes wide and _horrified_ – "What did you say to her?" He demanded. "Is she alright? Did you – god, did you make her cry? Ed? What –"

"I didn't say anything! _God_." He huffed out a breath, ignored how it rasped on the way up his throat. "Nothing happened. She just – _looked_ at me, and then ran off. What was I supposed to do, I didn't even _know_ she..." Something.

"She's been waiting for you since we were kids." Al said, heavy like the sky sinking, and Ed pulled and shifted and tugged at him until Al flumped back into his arms again. "How could you _not_ know? We'd come back to visit and she wouldn't even _see_ anything else, it was like – like I wasn't even _there_ –"

"It was different then. I mean, I'm sure if she'd got to take a wrench to you she'd be all over you like a rash."

"– and you just _ignored_ her, or – she's not a rash, brother," Al said indignantly, interrupting himself where Ed hadn't quite managed, "she's – _beautiful_ –"

"Hey." Ed said, nudging Al embarrassedly with his shoulder, because – because it was _Al_ and _Winry_, and he really didn't need to be thinking about Al thinking about Winry or remembering them in the kitchen in front of the stove and _god_ he was never going to be able to cook anything on it or _look_ at it ever again – but Al was upset, and it was _Al_ and _Winry_. "She's always got on better with you, y'know. You tell her nice stuff, 'stead 'a just the truth that she's a spastic, machine obsessed psycho. She'll figure it out."

Silence, and then; "She's not spastic. And we've always been the same and she'd still follow you around and ask for you and miss you and like _you _and I was just – just –"

"You weren't _just_ anything." Ed snapped, couldn't help it. "And she didn't _follow me around_; we all did stuff together." Another nudge, and, "If anything, we'd both be following you, 'cause you always had the longer legs."

Al made a choked sound, and then another, and his body shook against Ed's.

"Shit." He said, the word wet on Ed's skin. "I must be pathetic if you're making short jokes." Another sound, and Ed burrowed closer, ran his hand unthinking down Al's spine.

"You ever tell Mustang, I will hurt you."

Al's laugh only had an edge of tears, and Ed had just started to feel relieved when Al said, "Yes, brother." in a suspiciously agreeable tone.

"I mean it, Al." Because, okay, it was good that Al was a little less tangibly miserable, but there were limits to what he'd do for his brother. "I'm not kidding. If you breathe a word to anyone who knows someone who knows someone who works _near_ his _building_, I'm gonna tie you to a tree covered in sugar water and _leave_ you there."

"I know, I believe you."

"Al, I swear I will transmute you into a doormat."

"Do it. I'll just get to see up Winry's skirt whenever she goes out." And Al jerked back, eyes wide and face burning and mouth open on some excuse that wasn't coming.

Very slowly, a grin spread over Ed's face.

"Really?"

"That's not what I – _brother_ –"

"_Really_, Al, would you?"

"No – yes – _no_, Ed, you – _fine_, I won't tell Mustang, but you can't say a word about – about – that. Okay?" Ed thought about it – eternal leverage over Al versus _Mustang_ – at least until Al's grip started pressing in toward the bone. "_Okay_, brother?"

"Yeah, alright, promise. Jeez."

Al released his coiled-up tension in a heavy rush of breath and the sudden return of blood to Ed's arms.

"I promise too." He sighed, settling close again with his head on the pillow next to Ed's and wriggling into him until they were as closely fitted as before.

Ed watched his own breath stir the hair hanging over Al's forehead and all his muscles gradually relaxed into the tangle of their of limbs. Al's heart beat against his, and he let his thoughts fade into a humming nothing at the back of his mind, because _Al's heart beat against his_, and that was all that had ever really mattered.

---

("Ed."

"_Ah_-! Roy –")

---

Ed was ridiculously grateful for the groceries in his hands that stopped him from fidgeting as he stood waiting for Mustang to come in. He didn't know what had possessed him to extend the invitation (it was _Mustang_, for fuck's sake – but then again, it was _Mustang_), but he had, and now Mustang was stepping past him (into his _home_) and Ed had never been quite so aware of what his hands were doing or where his eyes were looking or what expression his mouth was trying to make on his face.

"This floor's just the shop." He said, kicking the door shut behind them and leading the way toward the stairs on the far right of the reception room. The room itself was small but clean, like Al had suggested they make it, with only a small desk set near the back wall, two chairs angled together in the corner to the right of the door, and some type of leafy plant in a pot pushed into the far left. "The workshop's through there," a wave to the door on the left wall, "and surgery's in the back."

He started up the stairs and tried not to show how his back shivered with the awareness of Mustang following up behind him.

"It's a good idea, having the reception separate." Mustang said, and Ed stumbled slightly on the next stair before he turned around to – stare. Mustang just shrugged, a smooth roll of fabric and skin and muscle and bone, and quirked an odd smile Ed didn't recognise. "Most people find automail a frightening prospect, even when it's necessary." He elaborated, and Ed – blinked, couldn't do anything else. Because Mustang had just _elaborated_, without the threat of very real, very impending harm, and Mustang was standing several steps below him, tilting his head_ back_ to look _up_ at Ed, and Mustang's eye was on Ed's, even darker in the dim light of the stairwell and even deeper the further Ed saw into it. "I imagine a neutral environment goes a long way to soothing their initial fears."

It took Ed a moment to process the words, lost in that late-early hour dark and all the things you thought while you were hidden in it, but then he – blinked, again. And grinned.

"Yeah." He said. "Yeah, it was Al's idea. He's a genius, y'know."

And Mustang – smiled a little wider, and his eye shone like sunrise.

"I do remember something like that, yes."

The laugh that sprung from Ed felt natural even after the sound faded. "Bastard." He said cheerfully, taking the last stairs two at a time and stepping out into the lounge. Mustang made a sound between a snort and a catch of breath, but Ed ignored him. "Al!"

Footsteps, then, "I'm right here, brother, you don't have to – oh."

Al stopped in the entrance from the hallway, sheaf of papers forgotten in his hand, and stared at Mustang with his mouth hanging slightly open. Ed felt strangely vindicated that he wasn't the only one who'd done that.

Then Al shot him – a look, some look Ed didn't know and couldn't interpret, before turning his attention back to Mustang just as quickly and _grinning_.

"Mustang!" He exclaimed, and then he was across the room, papers dumped carelessly on the table and his arms thrown around Mustang with as much easy enthusiasm as when they'd left.

Something twisted up in Ed's stomach but he ignored it; it didn't even matter when Al was happy like that, anyway, so he just grinned, moved through the open doorway to the kitchen and started putting the groceries away.

"Alphonse." Mustang was saying, the warmth in his voice so different from the cold-blank drop of _Ed_ from earlier – though that had been _Ed_ not _Edward_ and that was _Alphonse_ not _Al_ and – and what the fuck was he thinking? "It's good to see you. You're looking well."

"Thanks." Ed could hear the smile in Al's voice, and whatever his gut was _still_ doing, it could fuck off, because he hadn't heard Al sound this unreservedly pleased since they'd come back to Central. "It's good to see you, too, sir. Ed didn't tell me you were coming." Sharp edge of accusation (of why-didn't-you-tell-me, of why-now, of a thousand things they hadn't said to each other for two, five, ten years) and Al's eyes didn't flick to him at all but they didn't need to.

Ed didn't lose his own grin, didn't let it so much as falter despite being the only one who knew it was there at all. "Ed didn't know." He returned, and he knew even with his back turned that Mustang's eye _did_ flick to him; he felt it on his skin like the prick of a needle. "I found him wandering around without a collar so I figured I'd better bring him home. It's supposed to rain this afternoon."

"Brother..."

"I hope that means you intend to feed me, Edward." Mustang replied, and his gaze wasn't like a needle anymore, it was a searing metal poker – "My last owner seemed to think I could live on air and paperwork alone, which is why I ran away, you see."

Bastard (son of a bitch, _ha_).

Ed turned from putting the milk in the fridge to _glare_ – and was caught by Mustang sitting at the kitchen table, legs crossed with casual elegance and chin resting on one hand and eye on Ed, pinning him as surely as a fluttering moth to a board.

He snapped back, "If you were mine I'd tie you up and –" and realised too late what that sounded like. And his mouth dried up when he realised too late what that sounded like, and his face seared red from his hairline all the way down his neck when his mouth dried up and he realised too late –

"Really?" And Mustang's voice had lowered and smoothed into something – something that made Ed – and _fuck_ how had Ed forgotten how much he'd hated this man?

"Fuck you." He growled, determinedly turning away again and not thinking about the way his skin ached like he'd torn away from something. "You want anything but thrown out the window, you'll shut your face."

A pause, and then, "With a generous offer like that, I can hardly refuse."

Ed was not disappointed that the man's voice had gone back to normal again. Was _not_.

"Good." He grunted, filling the kettle and putting it on the stove. Al laughed behind him, and Ed nearly pulled something forcing his body not to jump; he'd forgotten Al was there.

"I guess some things never change." But he didn't sound upset about it, so Ed just snorted in agreement and didn't think, _Too bad_.

_---_

Ed was not reading the newspaper. Well, he was, but that was all. Maybe he'd had no interest in it when he was a kid (and god, he'd been _such_ a kid, how the hell could he not have realised...?) but he'd been a bit occupied at the time, with little things like researching illegal alchemy and running around the country trying not to get killed and, oh yeah, _getting Al's body back_. Why would he have wasted time reading a bunch of bias, half-true, barely-intelligible drivel that had nothing to do with him (at least nothing to do with him that was _useful_) when there had been a never-ending pile of stale alchemy texts that could have held that essential word of a clue...?

Anyway, he'd never actually picked one up with the intention of _reading_ it until it had been a week since he'd woken up in hospital and two days since the nurses had stopped sedating him into a bored-less doze – and even then, he'd been planning to transmute paper darts and aim them at the trashcan across the room. He'd gotten to page three (the first-page dart had missed the bin but the three he had made from page two had all got in because he'd adjusted the aerodynamics) when a headline caught his eye, stopping his hands nearly a foot away from each other.

_Alchemist of the People Offered Honourable Discharge_ – which _he'd_ certainly heard nothing about, and for a moment he'd wondered if this was Mustang's grand secret to knowing everything he did almost before he did it. And then he'd snorted, because the man's best friend was _Hughes_, and that was explanation enough.

Somewhat curious but mostly bored, he'd read the article – and actually choked on his own spit in – shock, something, when the reporter quoted Mustang; _"Fullmetal has been an asset not only to the military and the People, but to my command. I'm sure those who have met him understand what I mean when I say it has been a wholly unique experience, and I'm privileged to have known him."_

Not that that had anything to do with Ed's continued interest in the news.

When they'd gotten back to Risembool, he'd figured it was the best way of keeping an eye on any rumours that might start circulating about Al, or him, so they could be ready if the shit hit the fan (and he was still kind of stunned that it never had, but he was a little better at maybe trusting that it wouldn't, now). And after a while, it was just kind of a habit to go buy one and read it on the porch when the light started to fade, and he found he liked knowing what was going on even if he wasn't really a part of it any more. So what if sometimes he turned to the politics page first? He didn't do it _all_ the time, and there was nothing wrong with following the progress of someone they'd known for so long or wondering why he didn't seem to have any designs on the Prime Minister's seat or maybe worrying a little that they'd had achieved their goal while he seemed to be leaving his discarded at the side of the road...

Ed was just reading the newspaper. People did it all the time, it didn't mean that it _meant_ something. There was nothing wrong with it. Nothing at all.

---

("Fuck." Ed jerked almost violently at the first touch – _there_ – and the throb of his heart beat through everywhere like it was too big for his skin. "Oh fuck –" It was too much, too close, too intense, he couldn't do this –

"Ed–?"

"_Don't stop!_" He scrabbled for a grip on Roy's sweat-slick skin and found Roy's shoulders, dragged Roy close over him and – arched up into the careful press of Roy's fingers, held himself steady in the naked darkness of Roy's eye. "Don't stop– _aah_ –")

---

"I think we should go back to Central." Al said, and Ed stuttered mid-movement, barely managed to block the kick aimed at his gut.

"Why?" He grunted, ducking under a punch and missing one of his own.

"It's been a year already."

Ed didn't reply immediately, catching a hit in his chest and returning it with a low kick to Al's unprotected side. _It's been a year already_ didn't mean anything, except that they'd had a year – twelve months, 365 days, a _year_ – not having to run for their lives, or chase after them, or put one foot in front of the other pretending they weren't wishing to just _stop_.

Ed swept a leg under Al's feet and Al flipped back, caught himself on one hand before springing forward again and meeting Ed with a flurry of punches.

There was no reason to go back, anyway. Winry was here, and even though all she ever did was throw wrenches at Ed's head, Al had waited eight years to be able to come back and not be metal with her, and Ed wasn't going to stop either of them being able to have that. Their mum was here (even if they'd been here nearly a year and Ed still hadn't gone to see her; he knew Al had, did, every day), and Auntie Pinako, not far from there, whose funeral they'd missed because they'd been following a lead when Winry had called Central and no one had been able to get hold of them until they came back too many days later. And _they_ were here, finally, where they'd been fighting to get back to since they'd left.

Even if sometimes all the space seemed just to strangle him and sometimes he itched to be _doing_ something, anything else, the only thing they'd really left in Central was the military, and they never would have had any part in that if they (Ed) hadn't been desperate (stupid).

"Ed–" Al grabbed Ed's arm, extended from landing a solid blow on Al's shoulder, and threw him forward over it. "Why don't you want to go?"

He shot back, "Why do you?" and rolled back over his own head to avoid the downward cut of Al's foot.

Al paused just long enough to shrug before he was moving again.

"I miss it." He said with an easy honesty Ed had never been able to match. "Not the missions," he ducked where Ed had been expecting him to sidestep and caught Ed in the legs with a sweeping kick, "but meeting people, researching –" Ed barely rose an inch before Al sat on him, thumping him back to the ground with a grunted _hah_ of breath. "Why don't you want to go back?" He caught and then pinned Ed's hands when Ed tried to grab him. "You're bored here, too."

"I am not." Ed scowled, bucking under his not-so-little brother without result. "Get off –

"No."

"Al –"

"_No_, brother. I've been trying to talk to you about this all week, and you just – _why_ don't you want to go back? I know you don't want to stay here."

"I do so! Get off me – dammit, when did you get so fat? I swear you weighed less as fucking armour –"

"We both know you're heavier than I am, brother." Al said, smiling slightly but not loosening his grip at all. "And shor–"

"Shut up!" Ed _howled_, and thrashed, and bared his teeth because if Al got close enough he had better believe that Ed was going to _bite_ his nose off, whether Ed had had to make it himself or not – "God, you're a shit, you're as bad as _he_ is, let me go –"

Al didn't let go but he did stop smiling, his face slowly folding into a frown.

"Is that why?" He asked in a tone Ed didn't know but froze him instantly. "Because of the military? Did someone say something? Did Mustang –"

"He didn't do anything." Ed cut in, a little too quickly. "It's not the military, he has nothing to do with it, I just don't want to go."

Al's eyes narrowed.

"You're lying."

"I am not. What about Winry?"

"You are so. Winry thinks it's a good idea, her and Auntie Pinako had started talking about it – before, anyway, but she didn't want to do anything until we got back. What did he do?"

"Nothing happened! And what the hell, everyone knew but me? Were you going to put me in a box to take with you on the train or just leave me here?"

"Neither, brother." Al said in his I'm-humouring-you-because-otherwise-I-might-do-something-I-regret voice. "I _told_ you I've been trying to talk to you about this. If Mustang did something and you don't want to go back to Central, fine. We can go to East City again, or – or Dublith, Xing, it doesn't matter. I just want to _do_ something again. It's been good here, I'm glad we came back, but it's not beneficial to either of us any more; my nightmares are getting worse and I know yours are, too, even though you pretend you don't have them. Don't you think it's time to get on with our lives? We spent so long getting them back that it'd be stupid to waste them lying around the countryside."

A moment, and then Ed said, "You've been saving that up, haven't you?" with a wry kind of surrender.

Al huffed.

"You've been dodging me for _weeks_, brother." He said, and finally loosened his hold a little, though he still didn't let him up. "We can talk about it, though, we don't have to go to Central –"

"I told you, nothing happened, he didn't do anything. Central's fine, if you want to go there, we'll go. Alright?"

"... Did he–?"

"Al! We're going to Central, you won, be happy. Now get off me, seriously, you weigh a fucking ton..."

---

("Ed." A husky murmur in his ear that shivered deep into him, sunk deeper even than the fleshsplitting him open. "You need to relax, Ed. Breathe...")

---

This was a stupid idea. Ed _knew_ it was a stupid idea, why the hell had he agreed to –?

"Ed." Oh yeah – _him_. Ed opened his eyes but didn't move his head where it was resting against the back of the booth – and there was Mustang, right where Ed had left him on the other side of the less-than-steady table (whenever Ed put his drink down the glass clattered a little and the liquid sloshed up the sides). Mustang had taken his jacket off (not military-blue any more but an actual suit jacket that cut too temptingly close to his figure when it wasn't flopped over a chair) at some point between the second drink and whichever this one was, and it left him in just his white shirt – which was gaping open at the neck (like gasping in a breath) and rolled up to the elbows. His forearms, naked and pale, rested casually half-on half-off the table, and were infinitely more enticing than any stretch of blood and sinew and skin had any right to be.

And his fingers were wrapped loosely around his glass, and his thumb was rubbing absentmindedly up... and down one side, and up again, and _god_ Ed wanted to touch him –

Which was a lot easier to admit when he was halfway to being comatose, actually.

Which was why he shouldn't have come. Stupid Mustang.

Stupid Ed.

"Ed." Mustang said again, and Ed dragged his eyes back up from imagining the man's fingers on not the glass. "For all our differences in the past, I had thought that by now you knew you could trust me."

Ed – blinked.

"Huh?"

Mustang... sighed.

"Something's been bothering you for a while." He said, like Ed didn't know that. "There are, of course, things that you can't or don't want to discuss with your brother, but I had assumed you would talk to me if you needed to. We're both reasonably grown up by now, after all."

Slight, _slight_ shadow of a smirk, but for some reason it didn't make Ed want to punch him in the face at all.

"I – what? M'fine, m'always fine, wha'w'd I need t' talk about?"

"Whatever you like."

"What, y' jus-t want me to..." A naked hand wove a clumsy gesture in front of his face and for a moment he didn't recognise it at all, didn't realise it was his. "What? I don't – m'fine. Th'r's nothin' wrong with me."

Shit. He was too drunk to be playing word-chess with Mustang.

Predictably, the bastard said, "I didn't suggest there was." and his eyebrows weren't any less eloquent or just plain _infuriating_ for all there was only one of them now (and _god_ Ed wished he could bring Archer back just so he could rip his liver out his nose –) and they just as predictably echoed the smug git with that edge of sly mocking; _I didn't suggest there was_. Bastard.

"Piss off, don't twist my f'ckin' words an' don't pretend like you weren't implyin' it. I'm _fine_, I told Al I w'z fine, wha'd'y' want?"

"Only for you to be happy, Ed." He _hated_ the man, hated him, hated him, hated him – "If there's nothing wrong, then I'm glad. I didn't mean to imply anything else."

"Sh't up." Ed mumbled, slumping further down into the booth and sinking his head back again, far enough that his eyes couldn't linger on Mustang like they kept trying to, like Mustang was – like Mustang was a magnet or something, only then Ed'd have to have automail eyes and he didn't, so maybe if his eyes were magnets – only wouldn't that mean _Mustang_ should be drawn to _him_, and – that was just so stupid it was... stupid. "Shut up, Sh't _up_, cond'scendin' prick, I know, alrigh', I _know_, I'm no' f'ckin' – stupid."

"Ed, I doubt anyone has ever accused you of being stupid. Too smart for your own good, maybe."

"Fuck you." Damn bastard, why did he have to do this? Couldn't he just... not be _him_? What had Ed ever done that he deserved – no, no, that was a dangerous thought, you shouldn't ask questions you don't want the answers to and you definitely shouldn't ask questions you knew the answers to when the answers were that. "I ged'it, I do. Al's worried – which is stupid, 'cause he's got his own... an' Winry mus' be goin' nuts, 'cause she hasn't bashed me over the head with anythin' in... f'ckin' ages... but what'm I meant to do? Just – stop? I don't..."

Long silence – long, long, long silence, because Mustang was waiting for him to continue, but his eye on Ed drowned out the rest of the bar even better than the beer did.

He waited a long time before finally giving in and prompting, "Don't what?" but Ed was looking at the wooden beams above him and all he could hear was dark eyes and long fingers and one thumb rubbing up and down. "Ed."

"What about you?" He asked, and even drunk he got a certain satisfaction from catching the man off guard – until he realised that his eyes had found their way back to the man to see the blink and the stutter of his hand on the glass. Damn. "That guy w'z rakin' you over th' coals, goin' on 'bout – Ishbal, me, Lior. But you're just–" lickible oh god _shut up_ "– th' same 's always."

"You read the newspaper." Mustang noted, half amused and half something – there, that familiar expression again. And Ed was old enough to recognise the facade for what it was now, so Mustang was just lucky that Ed was past the frantic-energy-drunk phase and was well into being too-heavy-to-move-drunk, or he would have found himself with a tight knuckled fist in the middle of his pretty fucking face –

He didn't just think that.

He didn't.

And Roy wasn't really _pretty_, anyway, it was just –

Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up –

"Bast'd, y' know I do – an' y' can't fuckin' say anythin' about it if y' didn't say anythin' the first time. So sh't the fuck up."

"Ah, I apologise, I didn't realise there was a time limit–"

"What'd I say? Shut up an' stop avoiding th' goddamn question."

"The same as ever." Mustang murmured, but before Ed could take issue with _that_: "I knew before I took the position that these things would come up, so to a certain degree I was prepared. And... I've had a lot of time to practice appearing unaffected."

Oh. Um.

"You. Get a lot'a shit. About me."

"Hm. Not as much as you might expect." And he looked at Ed in a way Ed wanted to squirm back and away from but Ed couldn't move. "Some, yes, but there's not much they can say when there are people who still hail you as the Alchemist of the People. I suppose I should thank you for that, actually; my position would be much harder if you hadn't endeared yourself to everyone you met."

"... 'cept the ones I punched in the face."

Holy shit. Mustang _laughed_, and the sound seared up Ed's spine like a tongue of flame, all connotation and innuendo included.

"Except the ones you punched in the face." Mustang conceded, and Ed wanted that smile, _wanted_ it with a strength that was terrifying, wanted it on him and in him and around him and wanted it in a way that wasn't even sexual, wanted just to be near it, just to cause it – _fuck_ why had he agreed to come –? "And Ishbal..." Roy continued, slowly, unprompted, "Well, technically I wasn't responsible for my actions there, as I was only a Major at the time. Realistically, it's bad press to call someone the Hero of the Isballan Rebellion one day and declare them a murderer the next. Besides all the politics involved, it's rather difficult to sell a newspaper to people who can't trust the news in it."

Ed said, "That's good," and his voice had an edge to it he hadn't really meant to be there and hadn't really not, "but y' say it like 'm not gonna notice how y' think you c'n tell me t' spill my guts an' then give me this shit about how it affects your position. E–"

"–quivalent exchange?" Mustang's lips quirked up into a wry smile and Ed wanted to – nothing. He didn't want to do anything. "I suppose I should have expected that. Very well." No, what – "The first time someone decided to seriously debate my involvement in Ishbal was before I started running for Minister, when I was still trying to get into parliament. I spent the night very, very drunk, and had to function on very little sleep and a lot of nightmares for the rest of the week. Now I've gotten to the point where I can get just a little drunk and have only mildly disturbed sleep for most of a week. When someone decided to mention _you_..." Mustang tapped his fingers on his glass a moment before lifting it to his lips, regarding Ed with an odd, amused-considering look Ed had never seen. "I found afterwards that I was rather glad I didn't have my gloves or a piece of chalk within reach. It was terribly frustrating at the time, however."

Ed tried not to gape. And failed. Miserably.

"You – _what_?" _What_? "What – what did they even _say_, you can't –"

Mustang's mouth was curling up at the edges in an all too pleased way and there was something weird leaking sharp and bright into his eye – Ed stopped, shut up, slumped back in the booth and _glared_. Bastard.

"Surprisingly," the man carried on like he wasn't giving Ed that _look_, "they generally don't spend too long on the fact that I sponsored you to join when you were only twelve – which seems like a waste of ammunition to me, but I'm not going to complain. Apparently, they prefer to focus on, as you said, Lior, as well as the reasons you got your commission. Honestly, it's like being at school again; all the children stand around calling each other names and the one who yells the loudest gets to be the leader. It's absurd."

Ed wanted to ask how people thought he'd got his watch if not for being – ha – too smart for his own good. It wasn't like the train thing was a secret, and he'd had to pass the alchemy exam just like everyone else, so what the hell...? But Ed _did_ recognise the ragged-sharp look at just the edge of Mustang's eye, did notice the change of subject, and whatever Al said, Ed _was_ older now, and he did know when it was better not to ask.

So instead, he said; "Told you politics was for idiots." and let Mustang's laughter wash over him like alchemy.

"Equivalent exchange, then, Ed." Mustang said after a time (second, minute, hour, Ed didn't particularly care when it was spent like that), his eye serious-intent now even if his mouth was still smiling. "You don't what?"

He didn't what what? For a moment, Ed didn't know what the man was talking about, still caught up in – oh. Fuck, did the man have a metal trap for a brain or something? For once, couldn't he just...?

Ed said – nothing, for a moment, for two and three and ten moments, because how stupid was he to get himself pushed back into this tiny, beer-sticky corner where he either had to tell Mustang (_Roy_ fucking _Mustang_) that _yeah, turns out I am the useless, dumb kid I always said I wasn't_, or – even better – that _when I thought I was going to die, even though I'd promised I wouldn't, I thought I was going to die and I realised –_

"I have to go." He was stumbled to standing before he even realised he was moving and his legs thump-cracked hard into the table (it didn't even wobble at the impact even though it was rolling like a wood raft on rapids under his hand) but he hardly felt it, didn't, all his drunken attention focused on trying to fumble his way out from between the seat and the _goddamn_ table with the room spinning everywhere and his stomach lurching up and his heart stuck in his throat the only thing stopping him from puking. Fuck, why couldn't he–

"Ed."

A hand on his wrist. No, not _a_ hand, _a_ hand suggested he didn't know whose hand it was and he knew _exactly_ whose hand it was; his eyes were fixed on it, already pale skin turned moon-bright against the dirty hue of his own skin.

"Ihavetogo." He blurted again – he didn't squeak, he wasn't a fucking _girl_, didn't – and jerked his hand, his wrist, his skin away

"Ed–"

with too much force, half-fell a step back before he caught himself on the wall that had slid under his feet where the floor should have been and turned, _ran_.


	3. part three

("Don't – don't – ohgod–")

---

Ed turned onto his other side and tried to concentrate on the still-strange press of his own skin against his chest and his leg instead of the cold twisting up in his guts. His eyes were tight and dry but he couldn't close them, wouldn't, was unable and unwilling to face what lay inside his eyelids.

Two days (nights) ago, he'd stumbled back at fuck-what o'clock and hadn't even had the energy to get under the blankets, had just fallen onto the mattress and thought dimly that maybe he'd be lucky for once and the pillow would suffocate him – and slipped into sleep without really realising he had. And dreamed. And woke up two hours later, hard and sick and _burning_, with the memory of heat-dark eyes and moon-bright hands all over his skin.

Al had noticed – of _course_ Al had noticed – when Ed had slumped down the stairs the next morning (_not_ the morning after, because – because, and it wasn't, and Ed didn't – he didn't think – but his cheeks still prickled with heat in the dark and his whole body throbbed with the pulse of his blood) and fumbled himself into a chair with his bones old and shaking inside him. And Al had also somehow known (god, there was no 'somehow'; it was _Al_) that it wasn't just the hangover spinning nausea around Ed's insides; he'd watched Ed with concerned eyes as Ed stared blankly at the food on his plate (toast? Eggs? Grass clippings? He didn't think he'd even known at the time) and felt sick at the thought of opening his mouth.

Ed put that down to the hangover at least, because he'd been _ravenous_ by lunch, and even if it felt like he was disintegrating from the inside, that could just as well have been the alcohol atrophying his muscles.

Al didn't say anything, though, not until the _next_ morning, when he'd found Ed sat up at the table with a cup of milk-pale coffee half gone at his elbow (it had seemed like the most logical thing to do when the night had dragged and dragged and kept on dragging and the coffee he'd made had been syrup-thick and heat-dark) and Roehl's treatise on the role of the array in alchemy open to the first page in front of him.

Even then, all Al had really managed was a querulous, "Brother...?" with his hand outstretched toward the coffee cup but not actually touching, as if he were afraid that that would – what? Make it real? It was just milk, it wasn't like Ed had done something like... suddenly decide to kiss Winry (oh – god, never think that again, _never_) in front of the stove, or – ha. Gone out drinking with the ex-superior officer he'd _hated_ and made himself sick because he –

There was no reason for Al to look at him like _that_, like he was more of a freak than he'd been with the automail and more broken than when he'd been running desperate toward the Gate, knowing he was going to die and knowing Al would _hate_ him and knowing he –

He was fine. He'd been fine, he'd _told_ Al he was fine, there was nothing to worry about, it was just a bad night. They both had them; Al less so now he had – Winry, and maybe Ed a little more so now because he had the wide loft to himself and maybe he couldn't really get used the hollow-thick silence that echoed around his every breath like two everything-nothing black doors that were only ever a clap away. But that was okay, because Al had Winry and Winry had Al and they were _happy_, like they should and would have been years ago if Ed hadn't fucked it up in the first place. It was fine, _Ed_ was fine, as long as they were happy it didn't matter that maybe sometimes (every time) he woke in the echoing dark the air pressed in on him like sticky black hands and glowing white eyes and the smell of his own acrid sweat made him gag, and sometimes (every time) he couldn't stop himself from thinking _oh god, please, I want_ –

Ed _wrenched_ himself upright, threw himself out of bed and choked on his own breath trying not to – scream, sob, _speak_, he didn't know.

Dammit, dammit, _dammit_, Mustang probably didn't even _care_, had probably just smirked and thought _such a _short_ attention span, Fullmetal_ and forgotten about it –

Except it wasn't Fullmetal, any more, was it? He'd said _Edward_ at the hospital, nearly two years ago, now, and he'd – he'd said _Ed_; it had fallen out of his mouth like it had been _waiting_ there, sitting on the tip of his tongue (oh god oh god, don't think about his tongue, don't, _don't_) until he had the opportunity to say it (_fuck_, don't be stupid, it wasn't – he wouldn't – just don't be fucking stupid). And then he'd _kept_ saying it, not even hesitating over the more familiar _F_- or _Edw-_, like Ed was no one but Ed to him, like Ed was Ed to him in a way he wasn't even to Al.

– _Fuck_, except that didn't even make any _sense_; it was just a name, just _one fucking syllable_, it was no reason to – to – to _think_ anything. He wasn't a goddamn girl, he didn't want. He. Mustang would never. It just wouldn't –

The point was, Mustang _wouldn't care_. There was no reason Ed should _still_ be awake (two _days_, and Ed knew he'd gone longer without sleep before but surely it had never been like this, like each minute stretched endlessly out before him with the threat of a million thoughts in his own company), no reason Ed should be pacing back and forth and back and forth and back with sweat cooling on his too-hot skin and forth, thinking –

Mustang and Mustang and Mustang –

Fuck, bastard, _fuck_ –

The phone was a sudden shock of cold in his hand, on his ear, and he didn't know what he was doing even as the ring shrilled too-loud and too-sharp and again and again and –

Stopped.

"I don't know what to do." He heard himself blurt in his own voice. Some part of him screamed _what the fuck are you doing?_ but the rest was just – relieved, and he thought, _Oh_...

_"Are you alright?"_

Ed got a hand over his mouth before the sound choked up from his throat, but only barely. Was he _alright_? Was he–? He'd just called _R-Mustang_ in the _middle of the night_ after – after – _that_ – and the _shit bastard fucker_ asked if he was _alright_?

"N-no, you bastard, fuck, didn't you spend however long fuckin' tellin' me I wasn't? Just –" fuck, what the hell was wrong with him? "– nothing, never mind, fuck you –" god, he was such a fucking idiot, next time he couldn't sleep he was just going to bash himself over the head with a brick –

_"Ed!"_ Ed's hand froze at the sharp call and he scowled at it, holding the receiver just above the cradle and not lowering it any further no matter how hard he grit his teeth. The _bastard_, how dare he, how _dare he_ use Ed's body against him like – like – _"Wait, I'm sorry,"_ like his voice stroked all the way up inside him even barely audible through a stupid lump of phenolic resin. _"I was asleep. Are you – where are you? What happened?"_

What – what? Ed stared at the phone, black lost into the dark of the room and cupped in his palm like holding a shadow, like holding –

Fuck, that was stupid – _so_ stupid – and – fuck. Like something a lovesick _girl_ would think; he might as well just cut his balls off and hand them over to save Mustang the trouble.

Except he wasn't _lovesick_ and he wasn't a _girl_ and –

Fuck.

"Nothing happened, okay?" He said into the receiver that had somehow made its way back up to his mouth. "I just – I –" god, he was going to hate himself in the morning "I don't know what to do. That's it, that's my 'I don't'. Equivalent exchange. I didn't mean to – yeah. So, that's it. Okay. Bye."

He hated himself right now; his hand didn't even twitch, and Mustang's urgent-quick, _"Ed!"_ burst like a shot right into his ear. _"Wait. Please?"_

And for a moment it didn't even matter, because that soft, nakedly pleading tone stole his breath and made everything, suddenly and inexplicably, okay.

The absolute, rotting _bastard_.

_"Where are you?"_

"What?" Apparently, whatever Ed's fucked-up hormones thought, Mustang was still a moron. "I'm on the _phone_, obviously, did you think I was standing there talking to you? God, how the hell do you even dress yourself in the morning?" _God_, don't think of him dressing himself _ever_ –

_"You're at home, then?"_

Oh. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm in my room. Why?" Which was... possibly the stupidest question Ed had ever asked, including enough dumbarse _what?_'s over the years to power a small country with wind turbines alone. _Because_, he didn't usually (_never_) rang Mustang in the middle of the night to blurt out non sequitur confessions from days old conversations. _Because_, he'd made a habit of running off to potential and likely death without telling anyone he was going. _Because_–

_"I just wanted to know you were safe, Ed."_

– he was a bigger moron that even Mustang, obviously.

_"Though now that I'm already awake, you might as well talk to me. I'm quite happy to listen, as it were."_

A completely and utterly _fucked_ moron.

"I –" Ed blinked into the dark and thought, _I...?_ There were an infinite number of things he could say that started with just that, and for a moment he was crowded with so many words that there were none at all, his mind faded to a formless, colourless, soundless blank. And then he realised – the silence didn't echo.

He held the warmed bakelite to his ear and he could hear the tiny disturbance, the hushed _schh_ of static that was Mustang's breath, Mustang's presence, Mustang. There, listening, despite Ed being... Ed.

"I don't. Know what to do."

Suddenly tired in a way he hadn't managed to be all day, all night, Ed looked dazedly around his room with neck muscles that felt stiff and brittle, wondered how he hadn't noticed he'd been staring at the wall two feet away for the last... however long. He picked up the body of the phone in his free hand (and felt the untouched chill of it because that hand was flesh, too, now) and backed up until the bed touched the back of his knees, let himself fold onto it.

A year, six months, three days ago, there had been so many things that he _couldn't_ say; he'd hardly dared start a sentence with _I_ at all. And now... now there was Mustang, Roy, and they were all okay.

(The bastard.)

He said, very quietly into the hush, "I still don't... get it. I mean, we reached our goal, right? We – we got _everything_, an' I just. Sometimes I can't touch anything with my hand 'cause it's – it's too _much_, an' I look at my leg and don't even know why it's _there_, it's like I've got someone else's – _meat_ stuck on me and I don't – I don't – I don't _want_ it, and how fucking stupid is that? 'Cause I do, I want it more than... than I ever wanted it back then, and it just. Doesn't make any _sense_."

Ed ground his forehead into his palm and squeezed his eyes closed against the sharp ache stinging behind them, didn't even try to stop the words.

"I should be happy." Through a throat stuck with razor blades. "I should – Al's worried about me. Fuck, _you're_ worried about me, an' you spent my adolescence sending me after – psycho alchemists and serial killers."

_"I believe you were under strict orders to avoid most of the serial killers, actually."_

Ed laughed only a little thickly, and he'd swear he _felt_ Mustang's smile in reply; it shivered all the up his spine and all the way down again.

"S'not like I didn't try." He retorted, and un-squeezed his eyes so they could just be shut to the breath of laughter that Mustang _hah_-ed down the line. There was silence, a moment, and when Ed spoke again his voice was barely more than a whisper. "I feel like I lost something. I got everything I wanted, and I feel like I _lost_ something. I never thought... is it supposed to be this _hard_?"

A pause, then; _"Living? Unfortunately, yes, most of the time."_ Ed stayed silent, curled over his knees with Mustang's presence pressed to his ear. _"If I were an idealist, I'd tell you that the struggle is usually worth the life you get in return."_

Tiny _hah_ of amused breath. "You're not?"

_"Well."_ Mustang murmured. _"Someone did tell me once that to gain anything, one has to __give something of equal value in return."_

"... You believe him?"

Silence.

_"No."_ Oh. Ed's heart twisted, stopped. _"I thought it was rather naïve at first, actually. But then he proved it so thoroughly that I couldn't not."_

... Oh. He – oh.

---

_"Well, what do you want to do?"_

"If I knew that I wouldn't be having this problem, would I?"

_"Not necessarily. You've spent the majority of your life up to now not wanting anything; I imagine it's rather difficult to suddenly reverse the behaviour."_

"Shit, what, you're a shrink now?"

_"I couldn't have got to where I am without a certain understanding of human psychology. And I certainly couldn't have lasted as _your_ superior officer for so long without a certain understanding of you."_

"Aren't we full of ourselves?"

_"Not without good reason, I assure you."_

Surprised bark of laughter. "Fuck. You're still a dick."

---

"Don't you ever..."

_"Ever what?"_

"I – I dunno, just. Wan' it to stop?"

_"... Not so much any more, actually."_

---

_"Have you thought about going into alchemy research? You could get into any lab in Amestris on your name alone, and you always did enjoy a mental challenge."_

"I – guess."

_"Yes, I suppose you're right – you are getting on in years, after all. What are you now? Nineteen? Twenty?"_

"Twenty-_one_, bastard, like you're in any position t' be talkin' about _getting on in years_. You blink, you're gonna be forty."

_"Ah, the 'I know you are, but what am I' defence. How will I ever compete?"_

"Shud'up. Dick."

_"I'm thinking 'no'. If I recall, _you_ are the one that called _me_ at – three o'clock in the morning with the burning desire to converse. As you are being uncharacteristically reticent, it falls to me to speak. Unless you would like to sit here in silence listening to one another breathe?"_

Yes. "No. Did you just use 'reticent' in a sentence at butt-fuck o'clock?"

_"I do believe I did, thank you for noticing."_

"Are you always this weird?"

_"Only when I'm woken at – what did you say? – butt-fuck o'clock_ _by stubborn alchemists who have no idea of their own brilliance or value, even after saving the world."_

"... 'msorry."

A sigh. _ "Ed –"_

"An' I didn't save anything."

_"Ed, you–"_

"I _didn't_. All I did was get Al back, which was my fault anyway, an' – an' I didn't even do that very well, did I, 'cause he had these – _nightmares_, an' he'd wake up screamin' like. Like his guts were bein' ripped out, an' I couldn't – couldn't _do_ anything, they kept gettin' worse an' I. I. I w's jus' – _tired_."

_"Ed..."_

"An' it was always me'n Al, y'know, ever since. With mum. I know you get it, got it better'n I did for – years – even though y' didn't know anythin' 'bout me from before. So I didn't think – Winry, didn't think maybe she could help, didn't think. I'm not saying – I'm glad she did, could, that he's happy, that he c'n have more th'n just me, 'cause. 'Cause. I'd never – all I ever wanted. Want. Right? Jus' for Al t' be fine, t' be happy, t' have the life he should'a had, should'a never lost. I. I shouldn't – hate it."

---

Three nights with no sleep, then; Al took one look at him the next morning and his mouth hardened into a flat line before he spun, snatched up his coat, left.

Ed stood alone in the kitchen, his whole body too heavy too light and his stomach rolling sick inside him.

---

Ed ignored the doorbell, and the knock on the door – and the second, and the third, but it wasn't so easy to ignore the man that made his way up the stairs into the lounge like he had every right to saunter into Ed's life however he pleased.

Ed didn't move from his heavy sprawl across the sofa, didn't move his eyes from their heavy stare at the ceiling.

"Whatever you're selling, I don't want any." He said.

Mustang flicked his eye over to him (Ed felt it like a touch, like a shiver) but didn't pause on his way across the room.

"I have had a long day," he said as he reached the kitchen, "and on pain of several broken bones I came straight from the office, so I am making coffee. Then we are going to talk." Several cupboards opened and shut and two cups tap-thunked lightly onto the bench.

"Don't take orders from you any more." Ed said without much inflection – and then, because it was Mustang and the man had always managed to drag things out of Ed that Ed hadn't wanted to give up, "There's pasta in the fridge."

A pause, silent but for the slow building rush of the kettle.

"Thank you." The fridge opening, more cupboards, a drawer, and Ed lay on the sofa, listening and staring at the ceiling. "And that wasn't an order; I was merely informing you of the inescapable facts of the situation."

For some reason, Ed couldn't think of anything to say to that. Or, rather, couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't come out sounding far too grateful for just the man's unexpected presence; Ed's own had been grating on him so badly that he'd started considering – doing something, anything, just to get away from it.

Apparently he didn't need to be facing imminent death to think stupid things, he just had to be left on his own for long enough. He was a genius, after all.

Ed snorted a breath through his nose that might have started out somewhere as a laugh.

"Something amusing?" Mustang asked, voice suddenly too close, and Ed opened his eyes (when had they closed? When had he decided that it was okay to let himself relax around Mustang at all?) to find Mustang standing beside the couch, dangling a coffee mug over his face in mute offering.

"No." Ed sat up too quickly, nearly hit the mug with his head and had to sit very still a moment while the room lurched and then settled around him. Mustang just stood, waited. "Yes. Me, I guess." He took the offered cup, didn't feel branded by the fingers that slipped briefly along his (warmth and skin and oh god _Mustang_), and sipped. It was thick, black, sweet. "Why're you here, anyway?"

Mustang raised one incredulous eyebrow and turned away to sit in a chair, but Ed still saw the tightening of a frown just at the corner of his lips.

And _god_, even when Mustang was disapproving of him, his lips could still burst heat in his gut like a gasp.

Bastard, bastard, (gorgeous) _fucking_ bastard.

"You should really try the wonders of communication." Mustang murmured with typical bloody crypticness, taking a sip of his own drink (thick, black, bitter). The anger and – fuck, there nothing else to call it even if it made him stupid – hurt rose up in him like bile at the taunting evasion – but Mustang continued before Ed could spit it back out at him. "The simple answer is that Alphonse was rather insistent that I come."

Ed (like an idiot) nearly dropped his cup. "What? Al –" Al. Al had – _fuck_, Al had – "Fuck." Of course he had. Ed slumped back into the couch cushions and hacked up an approximation of a laugh. Somehow, his eyes didn't leave Mustang, and he meant to say, _Well, you came, you can piss off now, I'm not your problem_, but what actually came out was, "What's the complicated answer then?"

A pause.

"Well." Mustang said. "That's rather complicated." Almost (completely) despite himself, Ed found a proper laugh rising up in his chest, spilling out of him – and even after the moment, and the next and the next, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Damn the man, anyway. "How are you, Edward?"

Ed frowned. "Wha's that have t' do with-?"

"Rather everything, actually."

Ed didn't know whether to scowl or go red with the sudden rush of heat that streaked up from his chest – so he settled on flat denial. (Because he was stupid.) "Well I'm fine, told you I w's fine."

"Yes," Mustang said, his eye dark and bottomless and fixed on Ed's, "you did."

Bastard always had found something in his words Ed hadn't even known was there to find. In him.

---

("Ed, breathe. Relax. It's alright."

Relax. _Relax_. Ed didn't know _how_ – relaxed was splayed out on the grass in Risembool covered in sweat and bruises, relaxed was hunched over a book about long-dead alchemy for no other reason than he was interested, relaxed was eating until he felt he couldn't move and then not moving. It wasn't _this_: lying naked with his legs cocked wide and Roy – _Roy_ – equally naked, pressed over him and pressed into him and pressed _everywhere_, so close and so hot that Ed couldn't get a decent breath, couldn't do anything but lie here with the heat sinking into him and _burning _–

"S'fine." It was barely a word, barely a gasp, his voice too choked up with awe and terror to manage much else. This wasn't supposed to be – he'd been stabbed right through before and it hadn't been as hard as this, hadn't split him open or sliced all the way up the middle of him, hadn't left him open and exposed and desperate –

"You're shaking."

"M'n-_o_-t."

"Ed." Just a whisper, just a brush of air, just a threat that could tear him apart because he couldn't stop _wanting _it – "It's alright. Just breathe.")

---

"So." Mustang said, and somehow made the word sound decisive rather than awkward after the slightly-too-long silence. He'd swapped his coffee cup for a plate of chicken and bacon fettuccine (_"This is good." With eye slightly wide in surprise, and Ed tried to keep the _stupid_ shivery flush of pleased warmth out of his voice when he said, "'course it's good, I made it."_), and he ate another forkful as he watched Ed expectantly. Ed tried not to think about how eating had never been erotic before, how he'd never be able to look at pasta again without remembering the way the fork drew out of Roy's mouth (Roy's lips) naked and brightly damp. "Something happened between butt-fuck o'clock and a decent hour this morning that made Alphonse want to break my legs."

"Fuck, I'm _sorry_, okay? I didn't know he was gonna –" _tell you whatever he did to make you think I was broken and make you come here when I feel like I am_ – "He jus' left, I thought he was pissed at me, how w's I s'posed t' know?"

"I wasn't accusing you, Ed." Mustang said, too softly. "I find it amusing that he threatened me with bodily harm on _your_ behalf, actually."

Ed was not blushing, he was _twenty-one_ now, a man by anyone's standards and he was not fucking blushing. "Fuck you."

As per usual, Mustang (smoothly) ignored him.

"Though it does makes a little more sense now. You look tired, Ed."

"You're the one I called at butt-fuck o'clock this morning, why're you surprised?"

"Ed."

"What?"

"Ed."

(And Ed remembered thinking_ Ed was Ed to him in a way that he wasn't even to Al_ and Roy's voice stroking all the way up inside him in the dark.)

"_What_?" It wasn't a snap, wasn't quick enough to run over his own thoughts and wasn't sharp enough to warn Mustang away and was just too wearily resigned to be anything but sullen. "I couldn't sleep f'r a bit, s'not a big deal. Happens t' everyone."

"Not to everyone." Mustang said without enough (any) arrogance or condescension or smug smugness for Ed to get mad at.

Ed glared at him and just felt tired. "Don't tell me you never sit up trying t' do anything but sleep an' then get stuck needin' t' sleep when you c'n do anythin' but. Three days isn't that long."

He'd spent years unable to see anything in those eyes save for fathomless black, but he barely had to look to see the drop of understanding, the weighted agreement in them – and he looked quickly away, terrified of the sudden clench of _yearning_ in his guts. He could deal with the – attraction, the thoughts and the dreams and the hunger, but he couldn't stand this ache that spread through him, that clutched at his heart and rose up pressure behind his eyes. This _yearning_ (not yearning but _yearning_, like a bone-deep keening he couldn't stop) for something beyond the man's body – for that understanding, for not just the man's hands but the man's eye and voice, for that steady regard that saw all Ed's sins and kept looking anyway. For some vague notion of a fantasy of all his shattered pieces being held, being wanted, being – loved. By this man. By Mustang. Roy.

And even knowing that it wouldn't happen, that he'd given up the chance to deserve it when he was eleven years old, he couldn't stop _yearning_, and the keening ache just kept getting worse.

"Not when you're living on adrenaline, no." Mustang was saying, and Ed tipped his head back into the cushions, let the man's voice sink into him like maybe he could fill himself up with it and pretend he didn't feel hollow all the way through. "When there's no threat to your life to keep you running and even just getting up feels like an impossible effort some days?"

Ed's head came back up with a jerk and he was caught by Roy's intent, completely unguarded eye.

"I do understand, Ed." He said, and the ache burst, bright and dark, in Ed's chest. Oh god, he couldn't do this – "And, trite as it sounds, it will get better in time. You don't have to _do_ anything; let your friends hold you up for a while."

And with a dumb kind of wonder, Ed heard himself say, "Friends."

Roy tilted his head at him. "Yes." He said simply, and Ed breathed, "Oh."

---

It was late when Al and Winry came back, shutting the door with a carefully quiet click and not even whispering, so they didn't wake him. When they got to the top of the stairs, Ed rose from the couch and crossed the room, wrapped his arms around his little brother's flesh and blood body and pulled them together as close as their skins would allow.

"'m sorry." His voice scraped rough and freeing out of him. "An' I love you."

Al's arms flung around him, clung tight enough to force the breath out of them both and Ed let him, returned the pressure, ground his aching eyes into Al's bloodbonemuscleskin shoulder and loved him like he hadn't let himself since he'd put him in a metal body.


	4. part four

Ed lay awake for the fourth night in a row and felt the tiredness sink into his bones. Al and Winry were moving around downstairs, getting ready for bed and talking in low murmurs that vibrated up through the floor in a soft thrum – and Ed didn't have to fight the teeth-gritting urge to press his face into the mattress, to pull the pillow over his head to try and drown out their peace with the sound of his own scathing pulse.

He'd been so caught up in – his own failure, his own impotence, that he hadn't been able to appreciate that they'd achieved everything they'd set out to do; _all I ever wanted_. Every time he'd jerked awake not-screaming in the night it had reminded him that he was selfish, irredeemable, broken, and every time Al had screamed himself up from the nightmares Ed had barely heard it for the accusation, the silent, inescapable _you did this to me_. And the guilt had wound tighter, squeezed so tense inside him that sometimes he couldn't breathe, and – he hadn't known what to do. What could he do, when he was suffocating himself and all he wanted to do was escape his own body and all he could do was not?

_Did you think we'd stop being your friends simply because you left the military, Ed?_

Well, he could have gone to his _friends_, could have – said something, asked something, _begged_ something, if only it would ease the pressure building up behind his skin like a scream. Except he couldn't have, could he, because he hadn't known they'd been friends in the first place.

They'd come back to Central and – of course Ed had thought about the office, everyone, and he'd known that Al had as well, but. But. Al didn't insist on contacting them, on going to see them at all, had just looked at Ed (_"What did he do?"_) and silently gave over the decision over to him – who hadn't been able to meet his little brother's eyes and hadn't said a word, had let almost a whole year slip by while his insides broke apart and his heart scraped over the pieces.

It was just – he'd been a kid. A stupid, reckless, arrogant _kid_, and he'd despised his own company; it only made sense that the rest of them would be relieved to be rid of him. And he'd been so afraid – that he might be right, yes, but he'd been even more afraid that he'd be wrong, that maybe they'd cared for him and still cared for him and would take one look at him now and say, _Oh_. _Is that it?_

Turns out he hadn't changed all that much (at all); he was still stupid.

Because with that first startled look, Mustang had reminded him, and made him forget. The man had known all of Ed's worst sins before they'd even truly met – and had accepted them like they were just another part of Ed, as insignificant and as important as the sound of his voice.

Ed sat up in bed and swung his legs over the side. Exhaustion still dragged at his bones and his joints still ached like he'd been old for years already, but – he could feel the edge of cold on the air as it brushed against his arms, could feel the hard chill of the floor under both his feet, could feel the beat of his heart steadily constant inside his ribs. He was alive.

---

("'m – breathin'. Bastard."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"_No_."

"Then you need to relax, Ed. Breathe. Trust me, Ed. Breathe..."

Ed gulped in air, exhaled jaggedly out through his nose, gulped in some more, was surrounded by skin and heat and Roy and finally found his breath, let himself be smothered.)

---

Mustang opened his door and – blinked.

"Ed?"

"Yeah." Ed curled his hands tight in the pockets of his coat and couldn't quite help ducking his head, feeling the heat of his pulse slowly beat outwards into his skin. "C'n I come in?"

"I – yes, of course." Mustang took a step back, opened the door wider in invitation. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah." Ed said again, stepping just far enough inside for the door to shut behind him and turning to face Mustang in the narrow hallway. He'd exchanged his work clothes (a dark blue suit that had brought out the glint in his eye and made it all the more unfathomable for having a colour) for a pair of loose drawstring pants and a well-worn white t-shirt that followed the lean line of his body in a way completely unlike the suit but no less captivating. The eyepatch was a stark shadow on the right side of his face – and maybe Ed could have talked himself out of this, before, but he was struck by the sudden desire to take it off, to run his lips over the ruined skin and feel Roy's breath shudder against his throat.

"Ed-?"

Two quick strides and he was in front of Mustang,

"Ed –"

standing so close he could feel the heat of his body, feel the shift of air as he breathed.

"I'm sorry." Ed said, heart stopped broken and bright with blood in his throat, and kissed him.

(Simple touch of lips on lips and Ed's breath was gone, lost into Mustang's startled-sharp inhalation and lost into Mustang's mouth and lost into oh god Mustang's body, but he didn't care, it didn't matter, because there was the simple touch of lips on lips and as much as he'd tried not to imagine – _Mustang_ – he'd never not-dreamed _this_, the simple touch of lips on lips and his whole being lost to the awareness of _Roy_ and, _god_, the pulse-thumping intimacy of it, being so close he could smell and taste and, fuck, _feel_ him, simple touch of lips on lips and simple closing of his eyes and simple surrender of all of him, _everything_.)

It was over in an eternity of three seconds that passed in less than a blink and he broke back with not-a-gasp, stared up at Mustang from too-close not-close-enough and felt raw like his whole body was new.

"Mustang –" He gasped, meaning to say – something, anything, _I'm sorry_ or _please don't hate me_ or _I know I shouldn't but oh god I was going to die and I think I love you_, but –

Mustang was kissing him. _Mustang_ was kissing _him_, sliding a hand into his hair and fanning a hand out over the small of his back and _kissing_ him, closing his mouth over his and coaxing his lips apart and _oh god_ licking inside his mouth.

It was everything and nothing like the first kiss. That had been – quick, chaste, devastating, and this was. Anything but quick; this went on and on and on until Ed couldn't remember having ever done anything else, couldn't remember not arching up into Mustang's body or not – _oh_ – moaning into Roy's mouth at the feel of Roy's pleasure rumbling in his chest like a slow roll of thunder. This reached all the way inside him, stroked down his throat and over his heart and into his guts until it was anything but chaste, until there wasn't a single part of his body that wasn't throbbing with the desperate ache of his heart(beat). _This_ – if the first had been devastating then the second destroyed him; it sunk to the core of him and burst outward like a star exploding, seared him to stark, blinding white-nothing before he was rebuilt under Roy's hands, Roy's mouth, Roy.

And then Roy was pulling back and it was somehow more, standing close enough to feel the heat from Roy's skin and Roy's dark eye on his like he could see inside him.

"Ed." Roy said, and stopped. His fingers threaded just lightly through Ed's hair, traced over the curve of an ear, and Ed thought he should say something about not being delicate and not breaking, but the words wouldn't come and he didn't want Mustang to stop, anyway.

Because no one had ever touched him like that, like maybe he could but was worth not breaking, like maybe Mustang just _wanted_ to touch him – and even through the years and the sick-hot nights and the heavy, aching _want_, Ed had never thought even once that maybe Mustang (could) might want him, too.

And Mustang asked, soft like a touch in the silence, "Ed?" and Ed realised he was trembling, was feeling his own tremors pass back into him where he shook against Roy.

He opened his mouth to reply, to say _something_ – and choked on the gasp of his own breath.

He was standing eye to eye, chest to chest, hip to hip with Mustang, the man's taste still lingered on his lips and in his mouth and slid deeper whenever he swallowed, he hadn't slept in _nearly four days_ – and he'd wanted this so much and so damn _long_ that he just couldn't stop the laugh surging up and out of him, like drowning.

Mustang didn't say anything. He held Ed, one hand running up and down his spine and the other cupped around the base of his skull (like he could hold him together like that), and let Ed twist his hands into fists in his shirt, sob laughter into his neck.

And Ed let himself cling, let himself be held, let all the fear and the anger and the tightly knotted self-hatred spill out of him and finally, finally, shudder away from his skin.

"Alright?" Mustang murmured, right next to his ear, and Ed leaned on him, nodded against his shoulder.

"Sorry." He whispered, feeling young, and stupid, and young. Mustang made a sound in the back of his throat that might have been a sigh, might have been a laugh, and he tipped his head against Ed's, pressed his lips to Ed's temple – and just rested there, a moment.

"Tired?"

"Yeah." And he was; the sleep that had eluded him for the last small forever was too close, now, seeped into the core of him and weighting his blood with sandbags.

"Does Alphonse know where you are?"

Mustang smelled like whiskey and flint and the dusky warmth of his skin. "Mm."

"Ed?" Ed couldn't quite stop himself from rubbing his forehead against Mustang's shoulder (didn't try) just to feel the bone, skin, muscle hidden beneath his shirt.

"Prob'ly knew b'fore I did, the little shit. Gave me a _look_."

"Did he?" Mustang asked, and Ed summoned enough energy to poke him in the ribs. He took a certain tired satisfaction from the startled jerk of Mustang's body, and a certain other satisfaction from the feel of the startled jerk of Mustang's body against his own.

"'s not funny."

"After being confronted by and _surviving_ a righteously vengeful Alphonse, I think I have earned the right to be amused if I wish, thank you very much."

"Y' talk all formal when y're tired." Ed mumbled. "An' I already said I w's sorry f' that."

A sigh, though it wasn't one of any of the usual sighs Ed recognised from Mustang; it sounded like the ache from Ed's chest. "It wasn't an accusation, Ed. You have nothing to be sorry for." Ed would have snarled at the man for the blatant lie (he'd seen bad shit when he was a kid and he'd seen worse shit when he was older and he didn't need or want anyone to feed him bullshit like _it's alright_,least of all _Mustang_ –), but he was just _tired_, exhausted right to his bones, and... maybe Roy made it sound almost true, somehow. And maybe in just that moment, Ed could let himself believe, a little, that it was.

The hands on him shifted, then, from holding him to urging him to move, and Mustang's voice came, low and smooth and everywhere; "Come on, you can't go to sleep there, Ed."

"S'comfy."

"Ed."

"M'st'ng."

Another sigh, this one familiarly, dryly amused. "You can call me Roy, you know. I should think we've known each other long enough, discounting your penchant for late night phone calls and erotically charged surprise visits, of course."

There was a silence while Ed pried the words apart from one another and then sifted through them to find the point.

"Roy, th'n." He said finally, and then, "Roy." again, because he liked the way it felt in his mouth, on his tongue, slipping out between his lips.

"Alright, let's get you to bed." Mustang – Roy – said after a pause, a momentary absence of movement and breath and pulse that Ed _felt_. "I'll make up the couch and we can discuss this in the morning, when we can both think with a modicum of sense."

"M'dic'm." Ed murmured. "We c'd share."

"I." M-Roy inhaled very carefully – and then exhaled, very carefully; his chest rose and fell against Ed's and his shiver rose goosebumps on Ed's skin. "I don't think that would be a good idea, Ed. We're both tired and – neither of us should be making irrevocable decisions after four days of little to no sleep."

"Three'n a h'f."

"If you're too tired to use full words, Ed, you should be too tired to be pedantic."

"Sh'ws w' you know."

"I suppose it does." Ed could hear the smile in Roy's voice; he smiled tiredly back even though Roy couldn't see it, followed the silent instructions of Roy's hands without opening his eyes. "Here," MustangRoy said, lowering him down onto something soft with a light pressure on his shoulders. The touch lingered for a moment after he sat, after he lay down, after his awareness started to slip away from everything else. "Sleep well, Ed."

"Nm."

And (finally), he slept.

---

"-ou awake?"

"Mm."

"Ed?"

"Uhn."

"I have to go to work, Ed, but we can talk tonight."

"Nn."

Ghost of an amused breath, of a touch. "Help yourself to breakfast, Ed. I'll call you later."

"Rn."

---

Ed spent the day – doing something, probably, though he couldn't remember what that something might have been. He'd woken to the bright cut of midday light across his face and stumbled halfway into the kitchen after the faint scent of coffee before he realised – he'd woken up _on MustangRoy's couch_ to the bright cut of midday light _from Roy's windows_ across his face _which Roy had _kissed_ last night _andoh_ fuck_ –

He must have made his way home at some point because he remembered slinking past Winry on his way up the stairs, and he must have managed to co-ordinate himself into a shower because he couldn't forget remembering (as the water sluiced down his body and his hand slid inexorably down with it) Roy's tongue in his mouth and accidentally biting into the flesh of his palm as he came.

And at some point the phone must have rung and he must have picked it up, because the first memory he had of the day that wasn't seeped in distraction like a dream was the press of evening-chilled bakelite against his ear (the one Mus- Roy had touched, the one that still felt shivering-hot at the memory) and Roy's voice, smooth-deep and stroking all the way through him.

"Ed."

---

("Ed – _fuck_ –"

"H-_ah_– Roy –")

---

Ed shuffled past Roy into the hallway (and fisted his hands very carefully not-touching-Mustang in his pockets and god he hoped twice didn't make it a habit), felt the draw of the man's body like the glintof (ha) aflame in the middle of a frozen nowhere.

"Coffee?"

Roy's carpet was mottled granite-grey, like a sidewalk torn up in the rain.

"Yeah."

Ed sat on the couch (the one he'd slept on, the one he'd dreamed on, the one he'd woken up on this morning surrounded by the scent of Roy –) while Roy went to the kitchen and made coffee, poured it, sugared one with a(n anal) pattern of three spoon-on-cup clicks, and he sat on the couch while Roy brought them in, while Roy handed him his, while Roy sat in the armchair too close too far from him across the coffee table.

And the silence thickened between them (like blood, like chimera shit, like alchemy) – but Ed had spent too long running away from (hating himself for) this already. And he'dgiven up any attempt at dignity when he'd turned up half-lost to exhaustion and kissed the man, anyway.

Ed grit his teeth against the pull of his own cowardice, forced his gaze up away from coffee not quite the right shade of dark.

"D'you want –" (Roy's lips on his like breathing and Roy'sbreath on his like laughing and) his breath caught in his throat "– this?"

And Roy said, "This?" with blank eyes and lips slightly parted in incomprehension, and – and Ed's hands tightened to white on his cup. (Not moon-bright white like something impossible but sick green-white like the start of an infection.) Because, _fuck_, he still didn't know any better than he had a day, a week, a decade ago, did he? He was still just a stupid, desperate kid, and he was still chasing after something that he barely understood and didn't even really know existed.

_Stupid_.

"I barge into your house in the middle of the night and _kiss_ you an' you're gonna pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about?" He hated the bastard, he _hated_ him and the words felt like glass ripping up through his throat. "If you don't want – just _say_, don't. Don't play _games_ with me, don't pretend like I didn't –" _didn't kiss you, didn't come here and offer you _everything_, didn't think you might want it_.

Silence, crushing like the press of cold metal, and then:

"Ed, I would never –" Roy's eye was matte black and his face had gone bone-white but he stared straight into Ed's eyes with a fierceness that pierced them both right through, and Ed felt sick and shredded and couldn't move. "I would never play _game_s with you. Not with this."

"... This." Ed repeated, so quietly it was barely a sound, and it burned sour like bile at the back of his throat. _This_: Ed's heart dumped messily between them and slowly staining the carpet. _This_: the air crackling between their eyes and their bodies and their mutual memories. _This_: Ed defensive and terrified and hurting Roy with the same oblivious ease that he always managed to hurt the people he loved.

"Yes." Roy said, almost softly, watching Ed. "Whatever you and I are: this. I have no intention of pretending it away, Ed, but. I need to know that _you _know what you're talking about, because even if it's just sex, it's not something either of us can take back. And..." his eye still didn't leave Ed's but something changed in it, something... "It's not something I ever want to take back. If you recall, I did kiss you as well." Oh. _Something_.

Something like maybe how now Ed looked, he could see that the mess between them was too big to have been caused byjust one heart. Ed forgot to breathe.

"I." His voice was a cracked little whisper and it floated helplessly up on the silence. "I don't –" He'd lost his arm and his leg and his little brother, he'd been inside the Gate three times, he'd seen blood and alchemy and the worst things done by the worst people; this shouldn't feel like one of the most terrifying things he'd ever done. "I just – want. You."

A pause. When Roy's voice came, it was laden with all the things that had been suffocating Ed inside his own chest for two years; "Then I'm yours."

And the world opened up, stunning and new, beneath him.

---

(Roy's eye on him and Roy moving ohgod inside him and Roy, everywhere, everything he'd ever not-dared to want and – "_Ah_-_!_")

---

They kissed – and kissed, and kissed, standing in the middle of the room with their still-full coffee cups sitting forgotten on the coffee table not-between them. Ed didn't know whether this counted as just their third kiss or – or their more-than-third kiss, because technically they'd only been this close to each other (simple touch of lips on lips) three times, but it felt like they'd been doing it forever, like there'd never been anything else, and their mouths (tongues, teeth, saliva) kept parting and coming back together again (in a new kiss?). And even though that minute separation felt like miles, felt like years, felt like Ed's soul being pulled out of his body every time, he didn't want to stop doing that, either, because he was getting addicted to the sliding wet sounds they made pulling apart together and the tiny puff of Roy's breath on his lips.

"Ed." Roy spoke straight into him and Ed _groaned_, a near-pained rumblethathe hadn't even known he could make, and he couldn't help pressing closer, pulling closer, needing _closer_, because Roy said his name like he was – like he was _amazing_, not just fine or alright or good enough but actually _amazing_, like Ed was even more than he'd ever dared to want, too, ever dared to hope for –

And Ed's hands were in Roy's hair, and Roy's hands were on Ed's waist, and Ed felt like maybe he was. His pulse beat deep in his belly and throbbed outward into his skin, and his whole body felt seared with lightning, raced with energy like the building spark of an array. It crackled through him from Roy's mouth, Roy's hands, Roy's body wherever it pressed against his, and he felt like he'd been transmuted, like he could be anything if only Roy was touching him and _oh god_ he never wanted it to stop –

It didn't. Not even when Roy drew back and stayed there, when he panted warmwet breath into Ed's warmwet breath and stilled the restless shifting of their bodies. The sensation stayed; the sparks of near-violent pleasure simply melted together, pooled thick into a molten wonder that thrummed out from the very centre of him.

"Ed." Roy said, hushed against him, lips brushing lips and – a question in just his eye, so close and so open to Ed's own. And, _oh_, Ed wanted –

"I –" He gasped through the stop of his own breath, feeling broken all the way through and amazing. "I've never –"

"I know." Roy murmured, stroking his thumb up... and down over the hard jut of Ed's hipbone through his pants, and oh_ god_ – "It's alright;" (Up again, and Ed barely heard the words, lost mesmerised in that touch and that voice and that eye.) "I fully intend to make up for lost time." And Roy bent down again, closed the vast inch of space between them, kissed him (again, again, oh _yes_, again).

---

("_Roy_ –")

---

Maybe they should have stopped there, standing fully clothed in the loungeroom with their mouths locked together and their clothes still separating them, but – but. This was the first thing Ed had ever wanted just for himself, and he'd known he wanted it (this: _Roy_) for two years already. He hadn't known he'd wanted this for years before that, when he hadn't been allowed to want and hadn't been able to want and had woken from dreams of blood and black doors and _Mustang_ with bile in his throat and an ache between his legs like a wound.

So they didn't stop; they swayed toward the stairs like they were dancing and they stumbled their way up like they were drunk and they fell into the wall, the bedroom, the bed like they were exactly what they were, like they were lost andaliveanddrawing breath through one another. And – _god_ – how had Ed gone so long without doing this, without knowing...?

Roy's hands were impossibly soft (_slipping up under Ed's shirt and – _oh_ – touching, the tentative flutter of just fingertips like Ed was delicate____and____breakable and amazing and then – then the stunning slide of whole palms, abraded to silk by the rough flint of Roy's gloves and easing up either side of Ed, searing his body between them_) and Roy's skin was smooth, pale all over in a way that Ed couldn't quite (fathom)stop staring at, that made Ed think things like _perfectimpossible_ and _oh fuck_.

They were essentially the same, organic and human, adult and male, head and chest and cock and legs, but Roy was – Ed felt like he'd never seen a man before. Roy's shoulders were slightly narrower than his and Roy's waist was slightly wider than his and Roy's body was just _longer_ (taller. The fucker) than his, with long, preciselimbs and long, (_oh_) elegant fingers and long, sleek muscles hidden under his skin but no less strong. And Ed had never actually _realised_ –

Naked, stretched out so close over him and edged in moonlight, Roy was _flawless_. Ed had known he'd wanted him, yes, had wanted him with a gut-deep ache that had felt like it was eating him from the inside, but he hadn't known to want _this_, the shadows rippling stark over Roy's skin and the twisting furrows of Roy's scars bared to (him) the harsh not-light and Roy, Mustang, _Roy_, like a creature of myth and snow and the night, like the most incredible thing Ed had ever seen.

"Yes." Ed said, and instantly felt stupid, because Roy hadn't spoken, hadn't asked him anything. He just couldn't help it; he'd never been that great at keeping his mouth shut even when he probably (definitely) should have, and he'd always been downright shit at it around Mustang – and Mustang (_Roy_) was _looking_ at him, eye bright and dark and heavy like the night, and Ed's whole body pulsed with it: _yes yes yes yes yesyesyes_ –

"Ed." Roy, Mustang, RoyRoyRoy said, so close Ed could taste it as it slid from his tongue. "Breathe."

---

("I." Ed whispered, his voice cracked to nothing and his heart still singing inside him. "I –")

---

Roy brushed his hair back after the first time (after Ed had come in Roy's mouth with Roy's fingers pressing sparks and lights up inside him), and kissed him, chaste and wet and bitter-tasting. "Okay?"

Ed panted, "Don't stop." and didn't care that none of the air was making it to his lungs.

---

("I know." Roy said into his skin. "I know, Ed, I know, always.")

---

Ed jerked awake from a dream about fire and meltingdrowning and scorch-dark books like doors and – oh.

The room was hidden by the thick blue of just-morning, but he could feel where he was sprawled half over another body (_Roy_), arm and leg and hips thrown over and holding down like a possession. His spine ached from the strange position and his skin itched at the slick slide of sweat where they were skin to skin (everywhere) and he was too hot, burning all over – and he settled carefully back into the curve and angle of Roy's body, pressed his eyes closed to the swell of Roy's ribs, slept.


	5. extra snippet

A little snippet set in part three, loosely titled: **If Roy Was A Dragon Ed Would Slay Him (But Not With A Sword) **^_^ Enjoy!

---

_"__I __don't know what to do."_ Ed's voice in the middle of the night and for a moment Roy was still caught in the dream, almost laughed because Ed very clearly _did_ – and then realised he was sitting up, had the phone in his hand, was listening into the receiver. Oh.

"Are you alright?"

A harsh sound that could have been a burst of static or Ed covering his mouth while he hacked up a sob.

"_N-no, you bastard, fuck, didn't you spend however long fuckin' tellin' me I wasn't? Just – nothing, never mind, fuck you –"_

"Ed!" It was too late and too early for this, not because Roy wasn't used to phone calls in the night that signalled potential-to-impending disaster, but because half his mind (more than half, the only part that wasn't was the part still holding the phone to his ear) was still lingering where it had been on Ed _before_ Ed had called and spoken and sounded cracked right through. "Wait, I'm sorry, I was" _fucking you_ "asleep. Are you – where are you? What happened?"

Silence, not even the sound of Ed's breaths crinkling over the line (like the rustle of sheets pressed close against his ear) and for a moment Roy thought Ed hadn't even hung up, had just dropped the phone and let it swing there with Roy on the other end. And Roy was waking up, now, could realise that Ed had called him in the middle of the night sounding like he'd cracked right through –

But then there was a quiet, _"__Fuck,"_ over the line, barely a breath of sound – and the relief crashed through Roy so hard he had to fight not to gasp._"__Fuck. Nothing happened, okay? I just – I – I don't know what to do. That's it, that's my 'I don't'. Equivalent exchange. I didn't mean to – yeah. So, that's it. Okay. Bye."_

"Ed!" _God_, too late too early too _ever_ for this – "Wait. Please?"

Sullen lack of static, but not the pointed beep of the dial tone, at least.

Roy took a breath – let it out again. And, _fuck_, yes, he had to agree with Ed on that one, because his body was still shivery and tight with unsatisfied tension and he couldn't get rid of it (oh _god_, don't think of coming with Ed's voice right _there_, don't, don't), and it clearly wasn't fading on its own because now he could feel his pulse everywhere and _fuck_ what kind of man was he that he couldn't drag his mind away from the image of Ed naked and open and wanting even when Ed had _called him in the middle of the night sounding cracked right through_–?

_Fuck_.

"Where are you?" His voice was steady, at least, calm and controlled and nothing like he was caught on the image of Ed's eyes dark with lust.

_"__W__hat? I'm on the _phone_, obviously, did you think I was standing there talking to you? God, how the hell do you even dress yourself in the morning?"_

Roy had to hold the phone away from his mouth so Ed couldn't hear the sharp, desperate breath he sucked in between his teeth. There was nothing in Ed's tone besides derision, if one overlooked the lingering distress that he was trying to cover, so there was no reason for that to sound as suggestive as it did.

Knowing that didn't really help.

"You're at home, then?" Roy asked when he could speak, and Ed said, "_Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I'm in my room, why?"_

And Roy was going to kill him – if he'd been in the room, Roy _would_ have killed him (except if he was in Roy's bedroom in the middle of the night he wouldn't be there making oblivious innuendos because it's damn hard to be oblivious when someone's got your cock in their mouth and you're writhing naked on the bed beneath them). It wasn't even unfair, because, as Ed (always) said, equivalent exchange, and hadn't Roy left enough people pining after him that this didn't even require creative interpretation to recognise as his penance...?

But, no, Roy had never been so blatantly (cruelly) oblivious; maybe he'd dated with no intention of taking it any further and maybe he'd had a tendency to lead people on, but he'd never – _never_ – been unaware of the affect he had on them, and he'd always been careful not to let it get too far.

He'd never done _this_, burrowed inside someone's ribs like he had every right to be there and then _left_, not even noticing he'd stuffed their heart in with the rest of his books and underwear and _goddamn leather pants_.

"I just wanted to know you were safe, Ed." Roy said, slumping back into his pillows in resignation. It was the middle of the night, his body was _still_ throbbing with heat, he had to be up for work in – three hours, but Ed had called him in the middle of the night, and however he tried to hide it, Roy could hear the tense tremor running beneath his voice like a fault line. So. "And I'm already awake, so you might as well talk to me. I'm quite happy to listen, as it were."


	6. another snippet

Another (the only other) snippet! This one's set in part three as well, a little (but not much) after If Roy Was A Dragon... . Tentatively titled **In Which Alphonse Is Precise** XD Thanks to everyone for reading, and especially to those who took the time to review! Always much love, and I hope you enjoy!! 3

---

Roy wasn't surprised when his secretary's startled shout was succeeded by his door slamming open to reveal a very angry Alphonse Elric, but that didn't mean he was looking forward to this conversation any more.

"It's alright, Elaine." He called through to the outer office without taking his eye off Alphonse. People had always been wary of Ed, whose anger (existence) was loud and quite often literally explosive, but Roy had long known that Alphonse was far more dangerous; his anger was quiet, but inescapably**, **very _precisely_ fatal. "Would you get some coffee for us? Alphonse has his strong, black, no sugar, if I recall correctly?" Alphonse didn't answer; Roy wasn't really surprised by that, either.

"Of course, sir." Elaine said, though she made no immediate move to do so, her eyes flicking uncertainly between them. "Are you...?"

"I'm fine, Elaine. Thank you." After another brief hesitation, she nodded, once, and left. The click of the door shutting behind her echoed around them like – ha – a trap closing. "Alphonse –"

"What did you do?" Alphonse didn't move from the doorway, stood pale and not shaking and very precisely quiet, and Roy thought he should be glad the boy – man – hadn't lunged across the room as soon as they were free of witnesses. All he could feel was a numb kind of cold.

"Alphonse–"

"No." Ed's voice would have broken on the emotion condensed into that one word, but Alphonse's was steady, calm, sharp like a needle point. "You don't get to do this, not to him. What did you do?"

What did he do? In terms of action, not very much; he'd talked to Ed, listened to him, sat drunk with him in a bar and wondered how the hell the sick light had managed to look so delicious on Ed's skin. In terms of verbs, a great deal that neither brother needed to know; he'd watched (been mesmerised by) Ed, he'd dreamed of Ed, for far longer and far more often than he dared admit even to himself. He'd had to stop himself from leaning over their sticky table and _tasting_ –

He said, "Nothing in particular, actually." and held up a hand to forestall the imminent _precision_ flashing in Alphonse's eyes. "But I do believe I know why you're concerned. Would you like to talk?"

For a moment, he thought the answer was actually going to be _no_, that Alphonse would simply step forward and crush his head between his palms like he'd never stopped being a seven foot high suit of armour ("_an' I didn't even do that very well, did I, 'cause he had these – nightmares –"_). But then Alphonse let out a harsh breath (like vomiting) and all the violence just – went, abandoned him to the slump of his own shoulders and the weight of his own head in the doorway, the bruises like bruises under his eyes.

"Sit down." And Alphonse once again proved himself different from his brother, near-dragged himself across the room and sunk into one of the chairs in front of Roy's desk without a word. He didn't take his eyes off Roy, but where Ed would have been glaring or suspicious, Alphonse just looked... tired, and maybe a little relieved. "I didn't do anything to your brother." He ignored the insidious _unfortunately_ that he couldn't quite stop himself thinking. "We talked. I mentioned that I'd noticed how unsettled he's been since you came back to Central, and he left. Last night, he called me.."

"Called–? He – you?"

Roy inclined his head in a suggestion of a nod; the confused hurt in Alphonse's voice made anything more feel like scraping sandpaper through an open wound. "I believe he felt guilty for leaving, and... he wouldn't want to upset you."

Alphonse went very still.

"It's about me?"

"... Yes and no." Roy said –

– and a light knock preceded Elaine into the office, holding two steaming cups in one hand. Alphonse shrunk into himself as she placed them on the desk, and the light double-tap of porcelain on wood felt like shots in the silence.

Roy waited several moments after the door had shut behind her again, took a sip of his coffee, continued. "He spent a lot of time thinking of nothing but your wellbeing, you know that; now that he doesn't have to, I believe he feels at a loss for what to do."

"But." Alphonse said, and they really did look alike when their eyes went wide and pained like that. Then, "I don't – why couldn't he _tell_ me? Doesn't he think I'd understand? I was _there_, maybe I was armour but I was still _me_, I'm not a child that doesn't understand, I never was –"

In a murmur, "You know he only wants to protect you, Alphonse."

"_I don't need protecting!_" Alphonse screamed without raising his voice at all, and he didn't jump up from the chair but clutched at the cushions, knuckles strained white. "You say he's been _unsettled_ since we came back but he was weird before that, before he even got my body back. I thought it was just – I made him promise that he wouldn't sacrifice himself for me, I didn't want anything if it meant losing him, but after... it was like he was surprised, like he'd never planned to actually..." He trailed off, but Roy didn't really need him to elaborate; Ed had always been willing to do anything for his brother, however that meant using his own life. "I never said anything," Alphonse rushed on, like maybe he didn't want to listen to those words in the silence any more than Roy did, "because I didn't want to fight about it and I was so – _angry_ – but it was over with, he'd gotten me back and we were both fine and that was _it_, all we ever wanted. Why does he have to be so – so _difficult_?" But his anger had already deflated on the last word, pierced by the guilt of his own thoughts.

Roy fought a sigh. "Alphonse." He said. "It's one of his most charming qualities."

Alphonse laughed, sudden and sharp and startled, which had been Roy's intention; he _hadn't_ intended that look that crept up into Alphonse's eyes when he stopped.

Abruptly, Alphonse said, "He called you." and something about the tone sunk, heavy and ashen, in Roy's stomach. Everyone thought Ed was the one to watch out for, but Roy knew better...

And as much as every instinct told him to lie, Roy had already admitted to this; "Yes." he said, and hoped Alphonse couldn't hear the dryness of his mouth, throat, guts scuffing over the word.

"He talked to you."

"That is generally what happens when one person calls another, yes." Roy said, and felt a flutter of memory

("_Unless you would like to sit here in silence listening to one another breathe?"_ and a little catch of breath at the other end of the line. A tiny, soft, barely-audible catch of breath that reminded him of what he'd woken up from, of what he'd finished after hanging up the phone, of what he shouldn't have thought of but did; the sound of Ed and the taste of Ed and _god_ the _look_ of Ed, head thrown back and hands clenched tight and mouth open, panting, letting out that little catch of breath)

that was the very _worst_ thing he could be remembering with Alphonse watching him like that.

A moment, and then, without a trace of actual questioning, "Did you mind?"

"Mind?" Roy repeated before he'd even thought – and then realised that it hadn't occurred to him that he might, that he probably _should_.

And he saw Alphonse realise it, too, had to bite his cheek to stop his mouth twisting up into any other expression but whatever was already on his face. _Dammit_.

"Alphonse –" He didn't know what he was going to say – or, rather, didn't know how he was supposed to say _I swear I would never do anything, please for the love of all male anatomy everywhere, don't tell Ed_ without it sounding _exactly_ as it sounded – but Alphonse interrupted him anyway, rising from his chair with a little _hop_, for fuck's sake, and a smile that had forgotten he'd come into the office to gut him, felt like he'd been gutted.

"Thanks for listening, Colonel – Minister – sir. Ed would never say it, but I'm sure he appreciates it, too; I'm sure if you gave him something to do, he'd start feeling much better. Thanks again!"

And he left.

And Roy stared after him. Then he took a slow, half-dazed sip of coffee – and promptly choked on it, because he realised what that look meant when Alphonse said _something to do_.


End file.
